


What Gets You Through the Night

by 27dragons, tisfan



Series: Tales from the Communal Kitchen (the ex-assassins files) [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: (i can't believe steve's sadness errands has its own tag), (nvm yes i can), Alcoholism, Canon-Typical Disregard for the Laws of Physics, Canon-Typical Unrealistic Dealing With Mental Issues, Canon-Typical Violence, Casual Sex, Comic Book Science, Depression, F/M, Oral Sex, PIV Sex, Shower Sex, Steve Rogers's Sadness Errands, Torture, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Walk Of Shame, bedroom gymnastics, can we please stop fucking up the furniture, how to piss off jessica jones, it's not flying it's falling with style, pity party table for one, the healing power of sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-14 14:20:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 45,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9185564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/27dragons/pseuds/27dragons, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Steve isn’t looking for love, just anything that will punch through the fog of his depression. He winds up in Hell’s Kitchen, where he meets Jessica Jones, who is more than willing to punch through just about anything.Jessica isn’t looking for Mr. Right, just Mr. Right Now. She’s a little surprised to find that Captain America fits that bill, and then even more surprised to find that she actually likes Steve Rogers.Two bodies with super-strength, enhanced healing factor, and a lot of rage and loneliness to work out. What could possibly go wrong?





	1. Comes from Loneliness

**Author's Note:**

> The events of this story take place between [Chapters 33](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8098120/chapters/20449081) and [34](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8098120/chapters/20449780) of _Winter is Coming_.

> “Great growth comes from loneliness. You have time to develop, dwell in your own mind and go a bit mad. All great people are a bit mad. That’s good to remember. Don’t escape it.”
> 
> ― Charlotte Eriksson

 

Steve got onto the first bus that stopped without even looking at which line it was, and slumped into the nearest empty seat, folding in on himself and staring out the window without really seeing anything. It should have been pretty -- it was nearly Christmas, and nearly dusk, and the longer he rode, the more holiday lights lit up on the buildings outside.

The wandering had started as an exercise -- he’d wanted to re-learn the city, to get a feel for this loud and glaring future in which he’d found himself. But it had swiftly devolved into merely an excuse to _not think_ , to let the lights and shopfronts blur together until he’d gone as far as the bus would take him, and then he would wander the streets, half-hoping to spot a mugging or for some gang to pick a fight with him so he’d have some way to bleed out the restless energy that shook his hands and prickled at his feet.

He was pretty sure Fury knew what he was really doing, but Fury hadn’t said anything about it, which as far as Steve was concerned meant a tacit approval. Natasha knew, too, in the way that she seemed to know everything about everyone. She’d known, when he’d bought his own apartment in the city, that he’d wanted to be alone. Needed to get away, occasionally, from the jovial camaraderie of the Avengers who lived in the Tower. As much as he appreciated them, sometimes it just scraped along his still-raw grief and anger, that they were laughing and bickering and _living_ when everyone Steve had cared about, nearly everyone he’d ever _known_ was gone. In those moments, he had to get away before he lashed out and hurt someone.

Of course, sometimes he sat in the dim apartment and wondered -- if he didn’t move, how long would it be before they noticed that he was missing? How long would it be before they came looking?

None of them, except Natasha, had even been to his apartment.

Of course, once Bucky had come back, Steve had moved back into the Tower. He couldn’t resist the lure of someone who _knew_ him, had known him his whole life, who knew just how out of place he really was. He had to be there if Bucky needed him.

Not that Bucky seemed to need him. Bucky had never really needed Steve, but most especially not now, not when Bucky was dating _Tony Stark_. It wasn’t like Steve didn’t approve or wasn’t happy for his friends -- he _was_ , he was _genuinely_ glad that they were so in love. He hadn’t seen Bucky so happy since... maybe that last time they’d been on leave in the war, right before the train. And God knew Bucky was doing great things for Tony, too -- Tony had cut way back on his drinking, and thanks to Bucky was getting regular meals and sleep. Steve was happy for them.

And Natasha and Bruce had gotten their act together too, finally. They weren’t as loud about it as Tony and Bucky were (who could ever match Tony for loud?) but the furtive glances and long sighs had given way to hand-holding and laughing and cuddling together on the couch. And that was great, too. Both of them sure deserved a little happiness in their lives.

It seemed like everyone had someone, and here Steve was, riding the bus by himself and watching the world pass by on the other side of the glass, and if that wasn’t the perfect metaphor--

_Could you maybe bring just a little more pity to this party?_ he mocked himself. Anger flared -- at himself, at the world, it didn’t really matter -- and he launched himself to his feet, not able to sit still another moment. He pushed his way to the front of the bus and waited impatiently for the driver to pull over and open the doors. As soon as the freezing air brushed his skin he was out, shouldering people out of the way and taking off down the sidewalk.

He turned at random, whenever the impulse struck, though a part of him knew he was avoiding any turn that would bring him back toward the Tower. Before long he was striding down the sidewalk at a ground-eating pace that probably gave him away to anyone watching, but he didn’t much care.

He kind of hoped, actually, that someone would recognize him. The wrong sort of someone, the sort who would try to grab him or prove something by fighting him or even shoot at him. Because the roiling anger and frustration and isolation desperately needed an outlet. He needed to bloody his knuckles, to taste blood in his teeth, to feel the pain that meant he was alive, that meant someone _knew he existed_ , if only for the wrong reasons.

And God, that wasn’t fair, he _knew_ it wasn’t fair -- he’d had to make up an excuse about doing his Christmas shopping to get the others to let him go wandering by himself. But in this moment, on this dim, gritty street in -- where was he? Hell’s Kitchen? -- it didn’t matter what he knew nearly as much as what he _felt_.

And like a Christmas miracle, he heard the sound of angry voices, a woman’s tones gone shrill and defiant, deeper ones low and threatening. Steve was moving before he even thought about it, homing in on the sound of skin on skin or skin on leather, slaps and punches and bones breaking. Steve rounded the corner into an alley, and at the end, there was one dark-haired and pale-faced woman facing at least eight men, looming over her and wearing something far too close to tac gear for Steve’s comfort.

There were more already on the ground. Even as he watched, she picked one of them up and threw him into a wall with a force that not even Natasha would be able to match. Enhanced, then. But still outnumbered, and the guy in the back, closest to Steve, was fumbling for the gun at his belt, and who knew if she was impervious to bullets?

He snatched the lid off a trash can -- grinned to himself at the memory -- and charged.

She wasn’t graceful; she didn’t move with fluid combat motions that flowed from one to the other, not like Natasha at all, but more like Bucky, who powered into combat with all the grace of an angry inbound missile. She grabbed one guy by the collar and slammed him several times into the alley wall, grunting with effort until his teeth were rattling and he went limp, a smear of blood against the bricks where his head had been smashed. She didn’t even seem to notice the guy behind her, trying to hold her back. Or maybe that wasn’t his aim; he grabbed at the bag she was carrying over her neck and shoulder.

Somehow, he suspected they weren’t just after her credit cards and cash. Steve grabbed the nearest goon and threw him across the alley. “Duck!” he called.

“Where the fuck did you come from, cowboy?” She _didn’t_ duck, and the flying goon took all three of them to the ground, on top of the guy who was probably dead with his skull busted up.

“Brooklyn!” he called back, and launched himself off the wall so he could kick two of them at once.

The thug who’d been after her bag drew a knife and stabbed her in the leg. She went down again, tripping and swearing. The bag’s strap was parted easily on the thug’s knife.

“Fuckity, fuck, fuck, god dammit,” she yelled. “Gimme my goddamn bag.”

The guy put on a burst of speed, apparently willing to abandon his comrades now that he’d got his hands on the prize, whatever it was. Steve neatly clotheslined him -- these weren’t enhanced goons; they could barely see him moving when he was at top speed and in the dark -- and collected the bag from his unconscious hands and glanced in it quickly, to make sure nothing was broken.

The thing on top of the open bag looked sort of familiar. Steve felt the skin around his eyes stretch as he recognized it. Where the fuck had she found this? He grabbed the rod and stuffed it in his back pocket.

The woman got to her feet, punched another goon out, hard, and he dropped like a sack of flour. The third one shot at her and she yelped over the sound of breaking glass. Suddenly the alley was full of the smell of whiskey, overwhelmingly medicinal, and she was soaked from the hip down. “Oh, you _stupid_ fucking son of a bitch.” She took two steps forward and broke his neck with her hands. She took especial care to step on the guy Steve had thrown, then swore again as the last one ran away. She staggered one step after him, then stopped and put her hand to her leg with a groan.

“Ma’am, are you all--” That was as far as he got before he was knocked into the brick wall by the force of her attack.

“Stupid fucking idiot,” she yelled, and her hands brushed down his back and snagged the rod from his pocket.

“No, wait, you don’t know what that is!” He grabbed at her hand, but shit, she was fast.

“I know exactly what it is, cowboy,” she snapped, twisting the rod toward the wall and from it, a brilliant flash of light exploded.

“What the fuck did you do that for?” he demanded. When he could see again, the wall behind him was melted, the bricks glowing like liquid lava.

“Doesn’t belong to you,” she said. She took three steps, jumped, and didn’t come back down, rising against the tide of gravity like she had wings.

Shit, she could _fly?!_ Steve jumped for all he was worth and grabbed at her ankle. Whatever her other powers, supporting his mass in flight wasn’t one of them, and they both went tumbling to the ground, rolling over and over until he ended up on top of her.

“Ow, Christ, you… That fucking hurts!” She struggled, kicking and bucking up at him, but her leverage was poor.

Steve managed to get her arms pinned down, but she was _strong_ , maybe even as strong as he was, and he didn’t quite dare let her go. But he was lying right across her hips, and -- adrenaline reaction, he told himself firmly -- certain neglected parts of him were noticing just how that felt. She was strong, yes, but also soft and curvy in all the right places, and the noises she was making were somewhat different from the outraged spluttering she’d been doing a moment before.

She took a deep breath, wriggled under him, and suddenly her eyes widened, large and dark. “Oh, my _god_.” She canted her hips up, her mouth turning from angry and hostile to suddenly and unexpectedly _interested_. “Dude, if we’re doing this, you _really_ need to buy me a drink first.”

Steve took the only course of action available to him: he blushed, so fast and hard his skin ached with the force of it, probably dark enough to be noticeable even in the half-light. He scrambled to get off, but she hooked a leg around his hips and dragged him back to her, cradling him against her, and… Oh… “You don’t have to go just yet, cowboy.”

“Ma’am, I, uh.” He would be lying if he said he wasn’t tempted to stay right where he was, with her heat against him, her body rolling under his, pressing up... He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw.

“Holy shit,” she said. “You’re Captain fucking America! Oh, my. God.”

His eyes opened of their own accord, though he really didn’t want to see whatever was in her face. But it was just pure shock, at least for the moment. He had to be grateful for that, he supposed. “Yes. Yes, I am. Ma’am, I’m--” God damn it, the stuttering again. Maybe, a small, still-rational corner of his brain suggested, it would be better if he wasn’t _laying on her_. He rolled to his feet, using the grip he had on her wrists to pull her up, as well, because otherwise she’d still be laying there, legs spread... He shivered. At least the blush couldn’t possibly get any darker.

She stumbled, still half in shock, and bumped into him, and he didn’t _mean_ to focus on the way the swell of her breast pressed against his stomach, but it was _right there_ and Steve hadn’t had his hands on a woman outside of combat training in... four years, at least, not even counting the ice. It was hard not to let his thoughts wander, especially since she’d made her interest plain. “That’s me,” he said again, like an idiot. “Who are you?”

She was panting for breath, the aforementioned breasts heaving like she was in one of those torrid, trashy romance novels that Bucky kept leaving around the Tower, that Steve kept picking up because he was a masochist. “Jessica Jones,” she said. “Alias Investigations. I’m a huge fan, can I get your autograph? Like, you could write it along my stomach, here.” She pulled one hand free easily, like he wasn’t even trying to hold onto her, and like she didn’t even notice the strength of his grip at all. She tugged her shirt up, revealing pale skin and a flash of tattoo on one hip and the very under edge of her bra. “All kinds of awesome.”

Well, that lowered the heat, if it didn’t extinguish it entirely. He’d be lying if he said he’d never gone with a girl who just wanted him because he was _Captain America,_ but he’d gotten just enough of Peggy -- who’d only ever wanted _Steve_ \-- to know that it wasn’t as attractive an option. “Maybe I’d better just let you go on your way,” he said, half-regretfully.

Disappointment, he’d expected. Or anger.

The look of steely determination in her eyes, though -- that was a surprise.

 

 


	2. Lie to Yourself

> “Lie to yourself all the time. It makes you feel better” 
> 
> ― Burgerpants

  


The list of things that pissed her off was getting longer than her arm.

Given that Jessica Jones usually started breaking heads when the list was longer than the fingers on one hand, this was an exceptionally bad day. Bad week. Bad _month_. She’d have gone as far as saying bad year, except that she and Luke Cage had managed to keep their relationship from falling apart for a good six months before he had to open his fucking mouth and fall in.

Definitely, she and Luke being broken up again was _his fault_ this time. So that was thing one.

Which was caused by thing two: she was right and Luke was fucking wrong and he wouldn’t admit it. The device she’d taken off a group of bad guys three weeks ago was goddamn dangerous and there wasn’t a place she felt comfortable just dropping it off. Given that the self-same bad guys had sent now, three separate strike teams to take her out and recover their toy just proved that she was right. Further considering that Luke had left her over it, Jessica was rapidly coming to the conclusion that being right _sucked all kinds of ass_ and she didn’t want to do it anymore.

Which went back to thing three: she’d been hired as extra security for a scientific research group who had badly abused her trust, which was hard to do these days since she trusted fewer people than the number of things that were pissing her off. The job was supposed to have been easy: extra security while their warehouse held a valuable asset, one week’s work for a very fancy payout. She should have known it was too good to be true, and when the original strike team showed up toting a fancy new weapon (Jessica herself had been calling it the Supernova Wand for lack of a better name; the thing was a slender rod, about eight inches long, that shot pure solar energy, according to the scientists. Dangerous as _fuck_.) to try to break into the vault, that was bad enough.

When they succeeded in cracking the vault and she discovered that the thing she had been guarding was an actual Powered Person who was being held captive, that was worse. She’d been known to engage in a little kidnapping and prisoner-taking herself, but at least she knew what the fuck she was getting herself involved in. Accessory to kidnapping was not a charge she thought Jeri could get her out from under.

Didn’t matter, the Powered Person had escaped in the confusion, Jessica had stolen the Supernova Wand, and further, had blackmailed her (ex) bosses into paying her bill anyway, lest she go to the papers about the whole kidnapping and possible diabolical use of a Powered Individual. Still, dealing with unhappy employers never made her life any easier, and she wasn’t sure that they wouldn’t also send a strike team after her. Not that she could really tell; bad guys rarely wore standard uniforms. Which probably meant she was going to have to do some unpaid work on her own behalf. Thing Four. Ug.

Thing five. Her flask had broken in the fight and about ten dollars’ worth of whiskey was seeping, useless, into the cracks in the pavement. It had also drenched her pants, so she reeked. Alcohol abuse. And she smelled like a distillery without getting any of the benefits, so yeah, that was pissing her off. And her pants were wet. Yuck. Thing six.

And then there was this fucknut. Thing seven.

He’d charged into the alley just as she was getting a handle on the strike team, throwing people everywhere and generally getting in the fucking way, like a bull in a goddamn china shop. God, sometimes she really hated men; powered men in particular, but men in general were pretty much assholes. She didn’t need saving, thank you very fucking much.

Thing eight. The strike team’s leader had managed to get the bag off her shoulder, found the Supernova Wand and made to run off with it. The blond super -- whoever he was, definitely not the one her ex-employers had been holding, and other than that she had no guesses -- had swung a trashcan lid at the strike team leader, knocked him off his feet, and grabbed the rod. He’d taken one quick, startled look at the rod and shoved it in his goddamn pocket. He obviously recognized it, which couldn’t be good.

Thing nine; one of them had stabbed her, which hurt like hell, even if it was already closing up. Powers or no powers, she felt pain, every bit of it, and it did slow her down for a bit. Which meant, thing nine and a half, one of the fuckers had gotten away.

Which led to thing ten. Fighting another Powered Person. Which was just exhausting. She’d waited until the strike team was down before she launched at him -- may as well only be dealing with one problem at a time, amirite? -- and he’d reacted with somewhat restrained violence, like he was reluctant to hurt her. Didn’t do him any good; she couldn’t be hurt, not for long. And she could fly. Well, sort of. She grabbed the rod out of his pocket (noting that he filled out his pants very well, and that might be thing ten and a half, that she was having to fight with the blond god rather than flirt) and attempted to launch herself skyward.

She didn’t fly very well, mind you (thing eleven) and it turned out that he could jump a lot higher than she’d have guessed, because he caught her ankle just before she got out of the alley.

Which led to _thing fucking twelve_ : He had her hands pinned over her head and was pressing into her as she lay on her back, in a puddle of whiskey and trash juice, rocks and other unmentionable debris shoving uncomfortably into her lower back and… if he didn’t have the Supernova rod back in his fucking pocket, then he was _really_ goddamn happy to see her.

Jessica wriggled under him; he didn’t seem eager to hurt her, and the look on his face was not setting off any of her myriad warning bells. (That was weird all on its own; she had more bells than Notre Dame.) His hot, heavy weight on her was strangely comfortable and he wasn’t bad looking, not at all. In fact… he looked familiar.

“Dude, if we’re doing this, you _really_ need to buy me a drink first,” she said as she tried to place him. She canted her hips up, and holy shit, he really did have a hard-on, because the Supernova Rod was a bit _shorter_ than-- Her brain short-circuited a little bit.

The blond blushed furiously, beet-red. (It was impressive that he had enough blood left to blush, actually, given how much it had to take to fill out that package.) He started to scramble off her, an apology on his lips. Jessica threw her mental hands in the air: why not, fuck it, she was the queen of stupid decisions. She locked a leg around his hips. “You don’t have to go just yet, cowboy.”

“Ma’am, I…”

And _that’s_ when she recognized him. “Holy shit,” she said. “You’re Captain fucking America! Oh, my. God.”

“Um… yes, yes, I am, ma’am, I’m…” The blushing captain got to his feet, his forehead so red Jessica was surprised it wasn’t glowing like Rudolph’s nose. Despite that, he hadn’t actually let go of her wrists, so she let him pull her upright and stumbled forward until she nearly knocked them both to the ground again. She wasn’t sure if he was holding her because he wanted to hold her, or because he was worried she was going to try to fly off again. Which was not happening until she got her toy back at the very least. “Yes, that’s me. Who are you?”

“Jessica Jones,” she said, breathing hard. “Alias Investigations. I’m a huge fan; can I get your autograph? Like, you could write it along my stomach, here.” And she wrenched one hand free to tug up her shirt, revealing her pale skin and flat belly. “All kinds of awesome.”

***

No, and no, and no. Jessica kept a firm hold of his wrist, dragging him after her down to her office/apartment. “Look, you spilled my whiskey and ruined my third favorite shirt, the least you can do is have a drink with me while you tell me what exactly that fucking thing is and why you think you should have it instead of me. Not taking no for an answer here, cowboy.”

“I see that,” Captain America said mildly. The blushing had stopped as soon as they were on the move and that was good, because she felt like she was tugging a recalcitrant teenager behind her -- though admittedly, she didn’t know many teenagers who were as big as the captain, six-foot something and more than two hundred pounds of muscle. She could bench him if she had to and if he’d stay still for it, but daaaaamn, he was huge. Taller than Luke, and if not quite so broad, still more than broad enough.

“What the hell are you doing out here in Hell’s Kitchen anyway? You Avenger types are more Manhattan.”

“Christmas shopping,” he said, and that was… well, okay, superheros probably also had Christmas, even though she hadn’t personally had much to do with the holiday herself since Trish Walker had insisted a few years back and Jessica had drunk so much eggnog that she’d puked on Trish’s boyfriend at the time, and that had ended that. (Both Trish’s relationship and the making Jessica do Christmas. So, small price to pay. That guy had no sense of humor anyway.)

“Well, you’re slumming it now, Captain,” she said.

“Steve,” he said. “I’m not in uniform and I’m not on duty.”

“So, this was just a random, hobby-type crime fighting ass-kicking?” Jessica said. She led him into the building and up the dark stairwell to her floor. Malcolm stuck his head out of his door the instant he heard her footsteps in the hallway, and would he never get over that?

“Jones, you… ooooookay?” he stretched the word out comically as he saw who was following her. He sniffed the air, which was ridiculous; she probably smelled strongly enough he’d gotten his whiff before he’d opened the door. “Well, this is new. Lord, girl, how much you had to drink, tonight?”

“Nothing, more’s the pity,” she said. “This happy asshole broke my flask, but it’s okay. He’s going to make it up to me.”

“Right. I’ll get out my earplugs,” Malcolm said, slipping back into his apartment. “Don’t break the walls, okay?”

“Shut up,” Jessica said, kicking his door closed. “Neighbor,” she told Steve. “Saved his life. He saved mine. Seems to think he has some sort of say over my life, now. You know how that goes, right?”

Steve considered this, as if it was an actual question and nodded. “There’s a certain responsibility there, if you’ve saved someone’s life, to make sure they use it well.”

 _Jesus, God, spare me._ She rolled her eyes at him. Well, she’d heard Captain America was a boy scout of epic proportions, although rumor had forgotten to mention what a tight ass he _had_ , as opposed to the tight ass that he _was_.

She unlocked the door and let him into her office. From her desk drawer, she pulled another bottle of whiskey and two glasses. She filled hers, and gave him only a couple of fingers because, hey, she was a good hostess, but she needed the drink more than he did. She knocked back the whiskey, feeling the slow, sweet burn. Aaaaah, perfect. Much better. She crossed three items off the list of things that she was currently hating. She took off her black leather jacket and hung it on the back of her chair, trying to pretend she didn’t notice how scuffed and filthy it was. She didn’t want to buy a new jacket, damnit.

Steve took up his glass, knocked it back neatly, and his eyes didn’t even water. She wasn’t sure why she thought they would, except that Captain America didn’t seem like the kind of guy who threw back whiskey with practiced ease. For that matter, she wasn’t sure what sort of guy he seemed to be, only that all the rumors and the television footage that she’d seen didn’t prepare her for the quiet, still man who stood in her office, drinking her hootch, and looking at her with eyes that had seen too much. A kindred spirit, somehow, and that wasn’t anything she could have ever predicted.

So it seemed there was more to Steve Rogers than simply Captain America. Almost against her will, Jessica found herself intrigued.

“So, this is my plan,” she said, pouring herself another glass, and dammit, her bottle was mostly empty again. “You’re gonna shower, and then I’m gonna shower, and while that’s going on, I’m gonna run our clothes through the laundry because we both smell like shit and I don’t know about you, but I’m tired and achy and cold. And then we’re gonna have some more drinks, and you’re gonna tell me all about the glowstick from hell and why it’s important to you, and I’ll tell you where I found it and what I know about it. Then, we’ll come to some sort of compromise about what we’re going to do next about it, which I suspect will end with me bein’ pissed off, since mostly everything does.”

Steve’s expression was a mix of embarrassment, amusement, and befuddlement. “And what am I supposed to do for clothes while mine are in the wash?”

“I got a pair of sweats around here that should fit you,” she said. “My ex left a bunch of his shit here and he’s about your size. They might have some bullet holes in them.”

He blinked. “Really?”

“Yeah, well, he’s immune to getting shot. And to belt-sanders. And buildings falling on him. And rocket-launchers. He’s kinda high maintenance in the clothing department.”

“And after I piss you off?” Steve said.

“Well, we could have some really great hate-sex if you wanted,” she said, giving him a smoldering look. “Or we could have shower sex, instead. That’s okay with me, saves water, too.”

Steve choked on the last swallow of his whiskey. “What’s in this stuff?”

“Just whiskey,” she said. “What, has no one ever propositioned you before, Captain America?”

“Lots of people proposition Captain America,” Steve said, breathing out slow and steady. He didn’t sound as if that was something he enjoyed.

“Yeah?” she asked, stepping closer to him. “Does anyone proposition _Steve Rogers_? Because I think I like him better.”

“Not in seventy years,” he said.

“Well, it’s about time, then,” and when she leaned in to kiss him, he didn’t back away. In fact, he met her halfway.

She tasted her own whiskey on him, and that was amazingly erotic, licking the liquor from his perfect mouth and feeling the strong, square teeth behind his lips. His hand went to her cheek, cupping her face. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer until there was nothing between them but heat and interest. His mouth was tentative at first, but when her hands went into his hair, he pressed harder, opening her mouth to him and tasting her tongue.

She nipped his lower lip, tugging on it lightly, and he exhaled sharply, blinked his eyes to look at her. She’d never seen such eyes before, blue as the sky and open and honest and vulnerable. He made her think of things like home and family and forever and… God no, that was _not_ happening, no. Jessica shoved him away, hard, and just as his face was registering shock, hurt, she yanked her shirt off, throwing the sticky, filthy cloth aside.

His jacket came off next and fell to the floor, then she had her fingers on his pants, struggling to find his belt, and he had her up, laying her out over her goddamn desk and that was hot as fuck.

“Shower?” she suggested. “We can get clean, and then get dirty, and then get clean again.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, grinning against her hair. “Sounds like a plan.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NB: The authors have not yet watched all of _Jessica Jones_. Anything that differs between this work and the canon 'verse as it stands... just call it a canon divergence, because we're not backing it up at this point. :D


	3. Everything in the World is About Sex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first 2 sections are straight-up smut. We return to your regularly-scheduled plot after the second set of asterisks. (Though that bit is still sort of Mature-rated.)

>  “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”  
>  \-- Oscar Wilde

The hot water took a while to get going, which gave them time to get all nice and sweaty. Steve was strong and Jessica was tough and he got her naked and against the wall in the bathroom in record time. She was a little slower in getting him out of his pants because she wanted to take a little time and open him up like an early Christmas present. (Hey, she’d mostly been good this year, she deserved a present.) Besides, those biceps and pectorals were miraculous all on their own and she had to touch and taste and feel and stroke and bite enough to get herself used to him before she even wanted to see what the ass and the thighs and the cock looked like.

She was not. Disappointed.

Holy crap. Her first impulse was to go digging around under her sink; she was just sure she had a tape-measure in there somewhere.

And the way he blushed, fire-engine brilliant all the way from his cheeks to his nipples and passing down a bit to go red and splotchy along his belly as well, when he caught her using the span of her hand to translate from the astounding visual to actual inches, and then… hoo-boy, the _girth_ on that thing… and it’s not like she had small fingers!

When he lifted her up onto the sink, spread her legs, and buried his face in her curls, she threw her head back with a force that cracked the mirror behind her and spilled aspirin and antacid tablets all over the floor. _We’re gonna break the place_ , she thought and couldn’t quite make herself care.

She hooked one knee over Steve’s shoulder while he tasted her, sampling each fold and driving her wild. She was hot, so hot and shivering at the same time, and aching and he lingered. His mouth closed over her clit, his tongue flicking at her until she screamed and pulled at his hair. She shuddered, muscles going stiff and tight and paralyzed as sensation washed over her. If anyone had ever asked her (and who would ask a question like that, but whatevs) she’d have probably guessed that Steve was a virgin. He seemed the type to hold out for marriage, but he wasn’t, oh, god, he wasn’t. Or else he’d watched a lot of good quality porn, because he knew _exactly_ what to do with a woman’s body.

He licked and nibbled and tasted and shoved two broad fingers into her, filling her up, stretching her out, and god, pressure and friction and…

She reached a fever peak just at the moment the sink came away from the wall with a dull crunch, and he caught her easily enough, bore her weight on one hand and _did not stop_ what he was doing at all, god! She stuttered into her orgasm, like she wasn’t quite sure where she was going, but once he launched her up, it was blissful freefall until she came back to herself, cradled against his massive chest.

And then they were in the shower, the water blisteringly hot and she couldn’t see anything but him: his brilliant eyes, pale blue with a dark ring around the iris; his hair plastered down over his forehead; that sweet face, earnest and innocent-looking even though she’d just been first-hand witness to how innocent he _wasn’t_. He pushed her up against the tiles and she was held, suspended there, her foot braced against the soap dish, the other leg around his waist. He was murmuring, she could feel the shape of the words against her ear, but the sounds of the shower and her own desperate cries kept her from understanding.

He slid in with one long, smooth stroke and she arched up and back, fingers digging into his shoulder as she came again and she didn’t even know that was _possible._ She usually required a little bit of downtime and petting and kissing and hey, that’s what blowjobs were for, right? To get him all blissed out and give her a rest, yeah? But there was no rest, and dear god, she didn’t want one if this was the alternative. Steve pumped his hips a few more times and if she hadn’t already gotten off, she might have been disappointed when he came, but what the hell, right?

Still, she had no control over her mouth, so she made a face. “That’s all?”

This time she couldn’t tell if he was blushing, or just overheated from the shower. But his mouth slid up in a goofy, relaxed smile. “Not unless you’re done, sugar,” he said, and she realized that he was still hard inside her and… oh, _good god_ , this was going to be Christmas, Easter and her fucking birthday all at once.

Steve let her dismount; crack, there went the soap dish and her landlord was going to kill her, but she honestly couldn’t bring herself to care about that either.

She grabbed the shampoo and practically threw it at him. “I’ve got whiskey and who knows what else in my hair,” she complained. Which is how she ended up with Captain America washing her hair and wouldn’t that make a story that Trish would be crying and dying to hear? Except it really wasn’t; it was Steve Rogers and somehow, that was even nicer, because Captain America might have been a great man, but Steve Rogers was a good guy, and she could both recognize and appreciate the difference. She wondered if he could.

***

He wasn’t going to stop blushing anytime soon, he knew that for a fact, because every time he opened his eyes, what he saw was Jessica’s pale skin and small breasts and wicked smile, and every time he closed them, all he could see was the way she’d thrown her head back as he’d thrust into her. And regardless of what he was looking at, his ears were still ringing with her gasps and cries, and his nose was full of the scent of her, rich and pleasantly bitter and warm-clean from the shower.

So, yeah: blushing. But that didn’t matter, really, because she was still smiling at him like that, inviting him to continue.

The last of the suds hadn’t even swirled down the drain when he picked her up again, tucking her legs around his waist, and carried her straight out of the bathroom and into the bedroom.

“Holy shit, how are you even real?” she demanded.

“Science,” he said, and grinned, because Bucky and Tony would both have laughed at that, and for a change, it didn’t ache to think about them and what they had. He dropped Jessica on the bed and climbed on after her, straddling her narrow hips and planting his hands on either side of her head to loom over her. “Step one: get clean, check. Ready to move on to step two?”

She barked out a laugh. “Shit, yeah.” Her body undulated under his, and suddenly she’d flipped him onto his back. She wasn’t as fast as he was -- if he’d really wanted to stop her, he probably could’ve -- but her strength was such a novelty, nothing he’d ever known he could want in a lover. He slid his hands up her thighs to steady her as she straddled him, her knees tucking up by his ribs and her hands braced on his shoulders.

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Okay?”

Steve reached up to cup his hand around her head, and pulled her down for a kiss that started out teasing and swiftly turned frantic and feisty. He pulled at her hair and she bit down on his lower lip nearly hard enough to draw blood, until he arched up hard against her, feeling her already wet and hot and needy. She released him with a groan. He let go of her hair and cupped her breast instead, enjoying the contrast of the stiff nipple and soft flesh.  “Ready whenever you are, sugar.”

She wasted no time at all before sinking down onto him, wrapping him again in the velvet heat of her body. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back, enjoying the sensation, revelling in it. He wasn’t already trembling on the edge this time; he’d be able to last a little longer, give her all the enjoyment she could eke out of him.

She leaned down -- oh boy, did _that_ feel interesting -- and locked her mouth on his neck, teeth scraping at the curve just above his collarbone, biting and _sucking_ and it... it hurt, but it hurt in ways he wanted never to stop.

And then she rolled her hips. Her whole _body_ , really, a sinuous ripple that pressed her breasts against his chest, and then her stomach, and then -- oh, _oh_. A groan tore through his teeth, and she chuckled again. “Like that, do you, cowboy?”

“Hell, yes,” he said, and when she did it again, snapped his hips up to meet hers.

She gasped, “Oh, yeah, just like that,” and kept it up, faster and faster, taunting him with the _perfect_ pace for a few strokes and then slowing down again. “Harder,” she demanded, and he grabbed her hips to pull her down against him, taking over.

She allowed it, and it was like breaking something open in his chest to realize all over again that it _was_ a surrender, that she could have successfully resisted his hold, that he didn’t have to be _careful_. She pushed up onto her hands and her hair was just long enough to brush against his chest, the ends drying but still damp enough to leave cool, distracting trails in the wake of her breath.

It was, it was _so much_ , almost _too_ much, the sensations and the sounds they were making and the smell of her. Steve panted and groaned and came again, but his rhythm only stuttered for a few seconds, and then he kept going. He was oversensitive now, a raw ache, but in all the best ways, and he wanted to feel her pleasure, to make her tighten around him, needed it like the air he was gulping.

“Did you just-- You are the fucking Energizer Bunny!” she gasped.

Steve laughed, short and out of breath. He let go of her hips and she sat straight up, and _damn_ he hadn’t thought he could get any deeper inside her, but that--

She took over the pace again and he let her, reaching up with both hands to cup her breasts. They were small, each one barely enough to fit in his palm, but soft and beautiful. He pinched at her nipples and she keened, arching her back to press into his hands. And oh, but that was amazing, the way the lightest touches made her writhe on top of him. He curled up to pull the nub between his teeth, flicking at it with his tongue while his thumb echoed it on the other side, pinching and rolling carefully, and then harder, letting his teeth scrape gently over the hard little nub.

When her breathing turned ragged, he wrapped an arm around her and rolled them again so he was on top. She was giving him that slightly sardonic “what now” look again, but that was all right, because he was making it up as he went along, himself. “Turn over?” he said, not quite sure how to say it.

She seemed to know what he meant, though; her eyes lit up and she pushed him away until he’d pulled out, and then she twisted around, coming up on all fours. “Ride hard, cowboy,” she said, tossing a sultry look at him over her shoulder and bracing one hand against the headboard.

“You got it, sugar,” he said. He held her hips and slammed back into her with a force that made the headboard crack and probably would have seriously damaged a normal woman.

Jessica howled in pleasure. “More of that!” she commanded, and Steve was happy to oblige, leaning over her back to nip at her shoulders as she bucked against him.

He could feel his own release building again, an inexorable heat that started in his toes and raced like lightning through his veins. He shifted just enough to put all his weight on one hand, and reached between her legs with the other, seeking.

“Shit, yes,” she hissed, spreading her knees wider and using her own hand to push him into position. “Right there, don’t stop,” she said, practically a growl. “Little harder, little more... _yes_ , just like that don’t-- oh fuck oh _god_ don’t stop. Fuck, shit, please, yes, yes, yes yes yesyesye--”

She screamed and thrashed, her inner walls squeezing convulsively around him. The headboard cracked again and came apart under her hand, and Steve pounded into her harder, ignoring the ominous creaking of the bedframe and letting his orgasm wash over him with all the force of an explosion.

“Oh, god, I’m done,” she panted. “I can’t-- no more, I yield.”

Steve laughed, a little hoarsely, and managed to roll off her, flopping onto his back and looking up at the ceiling. “Good. ‘Bout ready for a breather, myself.”

And wasn’t that something? He’d been in hours-long battles that hadn’t left him this winded, this drained, this... calm and centered and certain of who he was.

He was never, _ever_ going to admit, though, that Tony’s not-infrequent suggestion that he needed to get laid had turned out, distressingly, to be entirely correct.

***

Doing whiskey shots out of Steve Rogers' navel while they lay naked in her bed and discussed the fate of the known universe hadn’t been how she’d expected to end her day when she’d crawled out of bed in the morning after crushing her fifth alarm clock of the week under one sleep-deprived fist.

But Jessica was freshly-showered and well-fucked and comfortable and while he’d blushed when she’d suggested it, he was still letting her lick whiskey off his stomach. And, after she’d tipped out too much and then licked his ribs while he squirmed and blushed and twitched and fucking _giggled_ , he’d rolled her over and done a few shots of his own.

“So, tell me about the rod,” she said, and he blushed again. Good lord, Steve Rogers blushed at an accidental innuendo, her life was complete now.

But that blush faded pretty quickly and his lazy, sated smile dropped away. “It’s bad. If we don’t return it, we’re probably going to be invaded by a bunch of angry Asgardians,” Steve said. He laced his fingers together behind his head and stared up at her ceiling.

“A bunch of whiches?”

“Battle of New York, the guy who was leading the Chitauri army? He was just one Asgardian -- and not even that, really, he was adopted. But still, you get the idea. That guy’s brother is Thor --”

“The battletank with the hammer?”

“That’s the guy,” Steve said. “They’re from a different realm, called Asgard. Tony says they’re pretty much aligned planets in different galaxies and they use advanced technology to transport themselves from planet to planet -- nine realms along the axis of the tree Yggdrasil -- whatever that means. They visited Earth -- they call it Midgard -- centuries ago; it’s where our Norse myths come from. They’re not actually gods, but they’re so much stronger and more powerful than humans, it’s not hard to see why those old civilizations thought they were. Tony insists on calling them aliens, because he doesn’t like the idea of gods. And also because it makes Thor laugh.”

“Personally, aliens kinda freak me out,” Jessica said.

“I’ve met a few,” Steve said thoughtfully. “Most of them haven’t been very friendly, so I take your point. But this is the world, now, I guess. Anyway, we got a ceremonial visit a few days ago from Thor’s father, Odin. He told us that this device had been stolen and that we needed to find it and send it back. He pretty much said they’d come get the device themselves -- it’s called the Verden Voktøy  -- if we couldn’t handle the task. And if they show up in force, that’s not going to be good for anyone. Even with the best of intentions, Asgardians create a lot of collateral damage, and if they think we’re holding out on purpose, well, I reckon their intentions might not be the best.”

“Those chumps that I got this from -- they stole some god’s toy, from another planet? How the fuck did they manage that? And how does Thor’s dad figure _you’re_ the ones responsible for getting it back?” Jessica poured herself another shot into Steve’s navel, cleaned it out with her tongue as he groaned and canted his hips up at her. With her mouth still full of whiskey, she kissed him and let him take the liquor from her mouth. Then he was devouring her again, kissing her so hard and firm and hot that she was mewling under his lips.

“You are damn distracting, sugar,” he said as they parted, both panting for breath.

“Undocumented part of my job description,” she said.

“Heh. The way Thor explained it, since we -- the Avengers -- stood up to and defeated Loki and the Chitauri at the Battle of New York, that sort of makes us, by Asgardian reckoning, the guardians of Midgard. Which, to their way of thinking, more or less translates to rulers, too. Let me tell you, that idea did not go over well with the United Nations.”

“No, I imagine not,” Jessica said.

“But none of the world’s governments really want to stand up and take on that role, either, especially when Odin was being all demonstrative with his airships. The whole mess in DC, with the helicarriers and SHIELD and Hydra didn’t help; we’re basically defenseless against the sort of forces the Asgardians could bring against us. And especially if they arrive in force, some idiot’s bound to try to swing back at them.”

“So, how did the idiots I was fighting get it in the first place?” Jessica asked. “I mean, I got it off a third-rate strike team hitting a warehouse, for fuck’s sake.”

“Odin might know the whole history, but he’s not talking. It’s not a single piece, either, which makes it worse,” Steve said.

“How so?”

“Well, you have this stick, that does lights, solar energy, like you said. We have one that does gravity; Tony and Bucky took it out of Hydra hands a few weeks ago. There’s supposedly a third part that does matter/energy conversions, and the whole thing fits together like some sort of cosmic Tinker Toy. Tony gave our part to Thor to ask him about it -- we could tell it wasn’t human tech right away -- and Thor freaked out and went straight to his father. Now nobody’s happy, and we didn’t even know where to start looking, so this is either great news…”

“Or the beginning of a very elaborate trap,” Jessica said.

“Yeah, that about sums it up,” Steve agreed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> History note: Tinker Toys were first made in 1914 and by the time Steve Rogers would have gone into the army, he no doubt would have seen them.


	4. Between the Lines

> “Sometimes the wisest choice is to avoid reading between the lines even though the message is clear.”  
>  \--Berivan Selim

Jessica was a lump of blankets and a tangle of black hair first thing in the morning. She waved him off with a muttered complaint but didn’t try to keep him in the bed. His clothes, in her dryer, were clean, but smelled of cheap laundry detergent and were badly wrinkled. She wasn’t even pissed when he took the device with him, having agreed that it was better in Avengers' hands, safer than in her own. “Knowing me,” she had said, “I’ll look into laser with remaining eye. Like Luke Skywalker.” When he’d been confused, she had held up an imaginary device in front of her face, like looking into a tube. “You know, most powerful weapon in the universe, stabs self through the head checking it out.”

That sounded vaguely like one of the movies Tony had insisted that he watch early on, back when everything was so new and confusing that he really hadn’t even tried to retain most of the things Tony had told him were utterly essential even though they were just fiction. So Steve just nodded and pulled on his shirt, and picked up the device. He turned it over in his hands, not sure what to say, or if he should say anything, or--

“Don’t talk to Malcolm on the way out, you’ll get stuck in my hallway for _hours_ ,” Jessica warned, half-mumbling. She rolled over, revealing a good deal of naked shoulder marked up with bruises and scratches Steve had left there, already healing, but still livid against her skin.

Well, if that wasn’t a dismissal, he didn’t know what was. Maybe it was the memory of last night riding hot in his belly, but with one hand on the doorknob, he managed to turn and say, “If you need to find me, I’m at Avengers Tower.” Which was the dumbest thing to say, he thought, because _of course_ he was at Avengers Tower; where else would someone go to find an Avenger? But at least he had said it without stammering.

“You. Me. Whiskey shots. Got it. Sounds great. After sleep.” And she fell back asleep without so much as another sound.

And that hadn’t been quite what he’d meant, but... the thought wasn’t unpleasant, either. He smiled and ducked out the door.

Malcolm, the neighbor, did try to ambush him in the hallway, bright smile and tangled, dreadlocked hair protruding from the door to his place. “Hey, you’re Jones’s new thang? Yeah, you know, I… look out for her an’ all, when… Well, damn, boy, you’re big. She must like ‘em that way, ain’t no little squirt like me… Well, yeah. You know, she more fragile than she seems. Try not to, I don’t know, I like her, man, so… Not like _that_ , I ain’t tryin’ to move in on your territory, I just worry about her. She don’t take care of herself, you know?”

Steve smiled thinly -- not coldly, because he liked that _someone_ was looking out for her -- but merely polite. “I’ll keep it in mind,” he said, and ducked out the building door before Malcolm could go on.

It was a bright, sunny morning, rather later than Steve usually slept, and he decided he could jog back to the Tower rather than finding a bus. It was too nice a day not to be out in it, moving his body and breathing fresh (well, fresher) air.

By the time he got back to Manhattan and the Tower, it was nearly noon. He needed a shower and a fresh change of clothes, but he should probably make sure the device was secured before that. He headed for Bruce’s lab, which was the most secure floor, and thus where Tony had built the vault for items of unknown and unspeakable power. (Steve mostly tried not to think about the fact that “items of unknown and unspeakable power” was a category of things they needed to deal with on a semi-regular basis.)

Bruce had approved the use of his floor for the vault readily, perhaps because the only other secure and reinforced location was in Tony’s lab, and if Tony didn’t have to get past Bruce in order to investigate the safe’s contents, he might blow the world up before anyone could stop him, just out of simple curiosity.

Bruce was in the lab, hunched over a computer screen. “Good morning, Dr. Banner!” Steve said. “Got something new for the vault.”

Bruce glanced up, just a quick slide of his eyes, then back at the computer. “Did I miss a call? I know this latest chemical breakdown from McCoy has been occupying me, but I thought I’d notice an alert.”

“No, no, I came by this last night. No call to assemble.”

“Came by?” Bruce pushed away from the computer, finally, and gave Steve his full attention. “What is it?”

“Part of Thor’s Verden Verktøy, if I’m guessing right. At least, it seems to be some kind of light-based weapon, and it matches the descriptions he gave us.” Steve held out the rod for Bruce to take.

“What?” Bruce took it up, examined it carefully, touching it as little as possible. “You didn’t just find this in a pawn shop, I take it?”

“No, I, er, helped rescue it from some people who shouldn’t have anything of this power.”

“Huh,” Bruce said. He pulled up the holodisplay, laying the Graviton Persuader’s image next to the new rod and zooming in on the glyphs or runes or whatever the markings were. “Who had it? Who was trying to take it? You handled it all by yourself? Well, yes, of course you did, but really, you could have brought it in last night.”

Steve didn’t particularly want to explain why he hadn’t brought the thing back to the Tower last night. “I’m actually not entirely sure who was after it; it might have been a couple of different groups, really. Was I right? Is it the solar rod?”

“It’s a physical match,” Bruce said, and tapped at the holodisplay’s controls. “The energy readings are slightly different, but they seem to belong to the same resonance category, which argues for a similar origin. And it’s definitely giving off the same sort of gamma emissions. I think we have a match.” He scrubbed his hands together. “Well, two down and one to go. That certainly makes the world a safer place than it was yesterday. Did someone else have it? They might have information on the third section. You really need to give me more details, Cap.”

Steve drew in a breath, and let it out. “She didn’t have any more information. Had no idea what it was, really, just that it was dangerous and if the thugs wanted it, they probably shouldn’t have it.”

“Smart woman,” Bruce said. “Anyone we know? I mean, come on, Cap, I know you were raised in the twenties and thirties, but you don’t have to worry about kissing and telling unless there’s _actual_ kissing involved.”

 _Don’t blush don’t blush don’t blush don’t--_ Heat flooded Steve’s neck and face. _Dammit._

Bruce pressed his lips together, trying to hide a sudden smirk and failing absolutely miserably. “Oh. I see.”

Steve rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. “So if you could just get this thing put away, that’d be great. I’m going to go, uh.”

“By all means, Cap, go… uh,” Bruce said, turning back to the device. “I’ll get this taken care of. And thank you.”

Well, at least Bruce wasn’t likely to gossip with the others. “Thanks, Bruce.” He left the lab like the floor was on fire, and had to pause in the hall for a long few minutes to ease the blush out of his face.

Shower. He needed a shower, and fresh clothes, and-- His stomach grumbled insistently. Food, right. Okay. He’d stop at the kitchen, grab a cup of coffee and a snack, and then go straight to his room. Yes, plan. Good.

He squared his shoulders and headed for the kitchen. With his metabolism, he was in and out of the kitchen a dozen times a day; he could just nod hello to whoever might be in there, and duck out again quickly, before any more awkward questions could occur.

But oh, damn, it had to be _Bucky_ in the kitchen, didn’t it? Bucky, whose enhanced sense of smell was even stronger than Steve’s. Bucky had his back to the kitchen, chopping vegetables and scraping them into a massive crock-pot. Was it a team dinner again tonight? Steve couldn’t remember, but Bucky hadn’t turned, so maybe Steve could just slide backward, catch that snack later (or even order a pizza to his room, that was definitely a thought) and--

Bucky inhaled suddenly, tilting his head to one side. “What the hell?”  

Crap. “Hey, Buck. Team dinner tonight?”

“Why do you smell like you took a shower in Tony’s liquor cabinet?” He turned around and leaned against the kitchen counter, crossing his arms over his chest. Bucky still had the knife in his hand, so that would have been vaguely threatening, except that he was grinning like an idiot. So much for Steve’s (admittedly faint) hope that the spilled liquor might be enough to cover up the _other_ things Steve probably smelled like.

“I wouldn’t mess with Tony’s liquor,” Steve said. He could feel the blush creeping back in.

“Late night?” Bucky asked, still smirking expectantly.

“I guess you could say that,” Steve muttered. He dragged open the fridge door. As long as he’d been caught out anyway, he might as well get his damn food. The cold air inside felt good on his overheating face. At least it was only Bucky, he figured. It still wasn’t as embarrassing as that one time in France.

Bucky went back to chopping vegetables with an air of “casual” that was so phony Steve was tempted to smack the back of his stupid head. “So... you gonna see her again?”

“Maybe? I dunno. Not sure she wants to.” Steve opened a takeout container to make sure the contents weren’t blue and fuzzy, then dumped it in a bowl.

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “You smell like someone else’s laundry detergent, Steve, couldn’t possibly be one and done.”

“Wasn’t like that,” Steve muttered as he jabbed at the buttons on the microwave, though he supposed he had to be grateful that it was the detergent that Bucky had decided to mention. “Jumped in to help her out of a jam, got messed up, she offered to--”

“Take you home and run you through the wringer?” Bucky was being kind, not looking at Steve as he de-seeded the green peppers.

The heat surged up into Steve’s cheeks, but he huffed a laugh. “Something like that. It was... It was nice.”

“Nice? Hell, yes, it’s _nice_ , Stevie.” He turned to reach for the tomatoes and stopped dead, staring at Steve’s neck. “Oh, _wow_. Look at that.”

Steve hadn’t looked into a mirror since Jessica’s had cracked last night. He put one hand up to his neck, which, now Bucky mentioned it, felt a little tender. “Oh.” That biting of hers had _marked_ him. Hard enough for it to still be there, hours later. He recalled the fingertip bruises on her shoulders, and all the heat in his face began to drain downward.

“She’s _powered_? Oh, man, Stevie, that’s so fantastic. You gotta bring her around, well, you know, if it goes anywhere. I worry about, you know, normal people hanging out with us.”

Steve’s shoulders hunched a little defensively, but Bucky knocked into him, grinning, and the tension bled out. “Yeah,” he said. “I might. If I see her again.”

“Okay, okay, Romeo, I get it. Now go shower, you smell like… well, alley and booze and girl. I’m tryin’ to cook here.”

Steve grinned and pulled the bowl from the microwave, dug in the drawer for a fork. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll go clean up so your delicate sensibilities won’t be offended anymore. I can’t believe you have the nerve to _still smoke_ and then complain about how other people smell. Jerk.”

“Punk,” Bucky retorted, turning back to his cooking.

Steve was not quite out of the kitchen before Bucky let go with a little warcry and did a victory dance around the kitchen like it was him, instead of Steve, who’d gotten a little action after a seventy-year dry spell.

Steve shook his head and left. As he passed through the common room, the elevator doors opened, spilling out Tony and Clint, in the midst of one of their never-ending arguments about some movie or other that Steve hadn’t gotten around to watching yet.

“Okay, but I’m telling you,” Tony was saying, waving his hands around like he did when he was especially wound up, “the special effects were so bad they might as well have had guys in rubber suits and visible strings holding up the-- Whoa, Cap, freshly-fucked is a good look for you. You should do that more often.”

“You’re just jaded,” Clint argued, not even taking Tony’s interrupt into account. “Just because the studio wasn’t ILM doesn’t mean they were bad. And even you have to admit that the story was just amazing, all full of thematic moods and brilliant plot twists. I do happen to know you pay more attention to that than you want people to believe.”

Steve stopped. And very carefully didn’t break the bowl in his hands. The good thing about Tony’s outrageousness was that Steve got flustered at the things he said all the time. So maybe if Steve just waited for them to pass by and didn’t say anything, Tony would figure he’d guessed wrong and Clint would chalk it up to more of Tony’s nonsense.

Naturally, that didn’t work. “The weird lighting that you’re dissing was a key element in-- Wait, what?” Clint stopped, turning very slowly to face Steve. His eyes widened, then narrowed, and he inspected Steve from across the hall as if Steve was nothing more than a bug under a magnifying glass, pinned and wriggling, and really, that wasn’t a thought he should have while he was trying not to blush.

“I have no idea what Tony’s talking about,” Steve tried. Even he could tell that had come out wooden and wrong.

“Uh-huh,” Clint said. He reached over, plucked something from the collar of Steve’s shirt. “Suuuuure you don’t.” He held it up; pinched between his thumb and forefinger was a long, black hair. “This doesn’t belong to anyone cleared for the Avengers levels. What _have_ you been up to, Steve?”

Tony tipped down his sunglasses to peer at it. “Brunette. Nice. Little split end, there, maybe she should condition more.”

Clint inspected the hair as if it were a clue in a murder mystery. “Too long to be Hill, although it’s the right color.”

Steve lost the war with his blush. “Hill!” he choked out, eyes bugging. “Oh my _god_ , how could you even think that?”

“You got something against Hill?” Tony asked, grinning cheekily.

“Obviously not as much as he got _against_ this girl,” Clint responded. He held up a fist and Tony bumped it without even looking.

“C’mon, Cap, spill the beans!” Tony said.

Bucky came up behind Tony from the kitchen. He was laughing, metal hand plastered over his mouth to contain the noise. “I didn’t even have to _say anything_ to him,” he declared. “I swear, babe, you have a sixth sense about people sexing it up.” Tony, naturally, preened as if that was a compliment.

“Hmmm. Bobbi was a brunette for a while, but I haven’t seen her in months,” Clint mused.

“I don’t even know who that is,” Steve said. “C’mon, guys, I just want to go eat something and take a shower.”

“Ooooh, are you still on your Walk of Shame?” Tony said. He looked more proud than accusatory, though Steve thought he might actually have preferred the latter.

“Oh, oh,” Clint said, “Jessica Drew is a brunette…”

Tony considered it. “Hot,” he agreed. “Though maybe a little freaky with the whole power thing.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Steve groaned. “You’re terrible people, all of you. I’m leaving now.”

“Wait,” Tony said, “are we absolutely sure it’s a woman?”

Bucky blew his hair out of his face. “Quite sure,” he said.

Tony spun around to eye Bucky suspiciously. “Do you know things that Clint and I don’t? Are you going to share with the class?”

“Tony, I know _tons_ of things that you don’t.”

“Hurtful,” Tony said, pretending to pout. “Why do you have to be so hurtful when I am only sweetness and light for you?”

“I must be mixed up with some other Tony,” Bucky snorted, then tapped the side of his nose. “Super-soldier senses, remember? He absolutely _reeks_ of girl…”

“Yeah, I’m done.” Steve stalked off, trying his best to look dignified, but probably wasn’t managing it. He didn’t bother with the elevator, going for the quickest escape.

He made it to the eighty-seventh floor and was less than a hundred feet from safety when the door on the other side of the hall opened and Natasha came out, dressed for exercise, a towel around her shoulders. She waved and walked by, and Steve had just a moment to think maybe she wouldn’t say anything. Then she turned, smiled knowingly, and patted him on the arm, very gently. “Good for you, Steve,” she said.

“What?” Steve burst out before he could stop himself, then scrambled for a recovery. He really didn’t want to know what she knew or how she knew it.

Nat tilted her head to one side and rolled her eyes, reminding him of who she was, what she could do, and more importantly, that she knew everything. Or, at least, she acted like she knew everything. “You think I’m not going to notice how you’re walking, Steve?”

“I didn’t ask!” Steve blurted. “I don’t want to know. Don’t. Say another word.”

Natasha, at least, didn’t pry any further. She just patted his arm again and continued on her way, humming smugly.

Steve all but threw himself into his apartment and leaned against the door, panting like some hunted victim in a horror movie. “Shower,” he told himself. “And food.”

Half an hour later, clean and fed and wearing clothes that didn’t smell of whiskey and other, less pleasant, things, Steve double-checked his path to the kitchen with JARVIS to be sure he wouldn’t run into any of his nosy teammates on the way. He’d have to deal with them eventually, but...

Path clear, Steve darted for the kitchen to put his bowl away and find another, slightly more substantial meal. He was _starving_.

The elevator opened -- it made no sense; he didn’t usually run into this many people in a _whole day_ ; there was no reason for the world to be conspiring against him like this! -- and Sam came in. “Hey, my man,” Sam said. “Did you forget about brunch, Steve? Like, ‘m not remembering wrong, am I? I thought it was supposed to be today, but you never answered my text. Where you been at?”

Steve hadn’t checked his phone since before he’d gotten on the bus last night. “Can just _one person_ in this building not be digging around in my sex life?” he burst out.

Sam blinked. Inhaled. “ _What?_ ”

Oh, hell. “Nope, never mind, I didn’t--”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Sam said, shaking his head. “Nope, can’t get out of it now. You got some? This I gotta hear. Waffles! This calls for waffles! And heaps of bacon and scrambled eggs and put that back, man, we’re going out for brunch and you are going to tell me _everything_.”

 

 


	5. More Than Anything

> “...sometimes I get tired. Sometimes I get bored. And sometimes all I want, more than anything else in the world, is to go on a freaking date.”  
>  \-- Kiersten White, Paranormalcy

Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. She was a stupid sundae with stupid cream and a stupid fucking cherry on top.

Jessica stalked past the Avenger’s Tower again, glaring up at it. The snow was a nice touch, really, in making her feel extraordinarily pathetic because she could see her boot prints from earlier in the day when she’d made the first pass and not been able to convince herself to go in.

What the hell was she supposed to say? “Hi, can Steve come out to play?” Who would she even ask? Half the building was public shops and upscale offices. (Jessica damn sure couldn’t afford one of those swanky rentals.) Research labs, development departments, fabrication. It was a matter of public record that Stark Industries produced all its phones and laptops and tablets there on site, which provided American jobs and reduced the chance that precious metals and toxic materials would end up in Asian waterways. Jessica approved, in theory, but in practice it meant she had absolutely no idea how to actually contact someone, and an Avenger, no less, who lived in the Tower.

Surely Captain America and the rest of the stupidly sexy men who lived in that Tower had fans and fanatics and probably the occasional assassination attempt and… other dates, even, maybe. Avengers Tower security was probably quite practiced at turning people away without even checking with the Avenger in question.

She’d passed by now four times and still hadn’t even made her way into the lobby, which was fucking pathetic. She probably had triggered some sort of watchdog program, too, by acting like a crazy stalker. Not the safest thing she’d ever done.

Four days had passed and he hadn’t called, and it was stupid that she’d sort of hoped he would, because she hadn’t done anything intelligent like give him her fucking number. She was never good at mornings. And he hadn’t come by the office, although she wasn’t sure he’d actually remember where it was. Not to mention the fact that if he had come by the office, she might have been a little more freaked out by that… which meant it was stuck on her to make the first (second?) move and so here she was, pacing around like an indecisive lunatic.

Jessica took a deep breath; Trish had been encouraging her to get out more, meet people, act like she was alive, had a life, and so help her, if she told Trish that she’d chickened out on asking Steve for another date (or even an actual first date) Trish would never let her live it down.

“Fine, fine, fucking fine,” she muttered and hit the revolving door with the heel of her hand and god damn it, either Stark should have some fucking sense, or she was angrier at herself than she’d thought because the glass cracked.

And suddenly there were armed guards everywhere. She dropped slowly to her knees, putting her hands over her head. “My name is Jessica Jones, I work for Alias Investigations and I’m here to see Steve Rogers? Sorry about the door. Look, just call him and see, okay? I’m really, really sorry.”

Fortunately, Steve was home, and he did want to see her. He strode out of the elevator and into the lobby about six minutes later, which was about three minutes too late for her temper, but at least timely enough to stop her from deciding she wanted to bust up some guards and get shot and reveal herself to the world when she flew away. (Again. The first reveal had not gone so well, _at all._ )  One of the guards had been edging toward her with a pair of handcuffs and that was _not_ going to go well for him in the slightest, when Steve -- no, no, that was all Captain America, even if he was dressed in terrible pin-striped trousers and a truly old-man style button down checked shirt -- barreled into the lobby with a curt “back down, now.”

“Hot damn,” Jessica said, getting off her knees. “I must really like you, to put up with a reception like that.”

Steve stuffed his hands in the pockets of his coat, his chin down, looking all shy and pleased and adorable, a completely different look from the “I will fuck you up” glower he’d directed at security, who were going back to their stations in a hurry. “Hey, Jess,” he said, grinning at her. “I… wasn’t sure you’d stop by.”

“Neither was I, frankly. Sorry about the door, tell Tony Stark he can fucking bill me,” she said. “Look, it’s… it’s snowing and everything and I’m no good at this, but do you wanna, maybe, go for a walk? Grab a cup of hot chocolate or something? Or you know, if now isn’t a good time, you could leave me a number? So I don’t get arrested next time for tryin’ to ask a guy out, because even for me, that’s sinking to a new low.”

“Now is fine,” Steve said, and hot damn, he offered her his arm like she was an ingenue in an old movie or something. Like he was courting her and not at all like she’d fucked him out all over her tiny apartment. It was… oddly charming. She linked her hand over the bend of his forearm and let him lead her out of the Tower.

She gave it about five minutes before they were trending on Twitter, or paparazzi were swarming all over them, but hey. It would serve Trish right for all the times Trish had been in the tabloids. She absolutely needed to remember to set up lunch or coffee or something and pretend not to want to tell her best friend absolutely everything.

“How’ve you been?” Steve asked, and he actually looked at her like he cared what the answer was.

“Busy,” she said, which was the truth, or at least some of it. She’d also spent all of yesterday drinking and trying to work up the nerve to ask Steve out, because she just didn’t do well with planning. Dragging him home with her, sure, she was always making with the dumb decisions and the poor impulse control, but actually going to where he worked and letting people see her? No, she didn’t much do that, really. And she’d spent the day before that feeling sorry for herself and stupidly lonely and why the hell was that an issue, because she damn sure hadn’t been lonely before Luke came into her life, and there was no reason why, now, she should want anyone. She should be delighting in her solitude.

But she wasn’t, and so here she was. “Look, I know it’s a date -- that’s what this is, right?” She waited until he nodded “-- but I have a little business, too, and I’d like to get it out of the way so I don’t have to try to remember to tell you, later?”

“Sure, that’s fair,” Steve said easily. His free hand covered her fingers on his arm, like he expected her to be cold, but she wasn’t. She was only cold when her body was directing energy at healing; in fact a bad enough injury could lead to hypothermia, a particularly nasty side effect. But she hadn’t been healing lately, and so her skin temperature was a good deal higher than the normal range for humans, not quite warm enough to be unpleasant, but enough so that other people tended to notice.

“Okay, so I have this lawyer friend, and she did some legal finagling for me, so I got down to the morgue. We left two dead in that alley and I guess their friends didn’t like them enough to try to get them out of there. I did not, by the way, mention to Jeri that you helped me out, but she may figure it out anyway. She’s annoyingly clever like that. Anyway, they had...” Jessica reached into her back pocket with her free hand and pulled out her phone. She thumbed it on and scrolled through her pictures until she found the one of the dead man’s shoulder. “Have you seen this before?”

The picture showed a small tattoo, a figure eight lying on its side with a Cross of Lorraine sticking up from it. “I mean, like Byzantine Empire shit is what my research has brought up, but both of them had the same tattoo, so I’m guessing it means something. Although if you ask me, it’s pretty stupid to identify your fucking troopers by a tattoo.”

Steve frowned at it. “It’s not familiar, but we usually let Black Widow and Iron Man do the majority of our digging around. If you could get a copy to me, I’ll send it to them and see if they can find out anything?”

“How about I text it to you, and then I’ll have your number and you’ll have mine. You know, in case we want to… whatever. Without the whole gun pointed at my head thing, because I’m pretty sure that getting shot in the head would end my career,” she suggested, and wow, didn’t that sound like she was being all pathetic and needy and whiny?

“I think that would be a very good idea,” he said, stopping on the street and cupping her cheek for just a moment, before blushing again and turning to walk next to her. “I don’t much care for the idea of you getting shot, either.”

Which was not romantic, it wasn’t romantic _at all_ , because no normal person wanted anyone to get shot and he wasn’t saying anything deep or meaningful or profound or even particularly fond of her, but… she thrilled to it anyway, and wasn’t quite able to contain a delighted laugh. “You say the sweetest things,” she said, because it was silly and she couldn’t control her mouth, never had been able to, for that matter.

***

This, this was new. There had been some girls, in the war, and there had been Peggy, but Steve had mostly kept all that quiet, because aside from Peggy, the girls Steve had been with hadn’t really wanted to _date_ him, and Peggy... well, they probably hadn’t done a very good job of keeping what they had quiet, but there were rules against fraternization within the ranks, so they’d at least had to give Colonel Phillips some plausible deniability.

And he’d been on some dates before the war, but those had mostly been things that Bucky had arranged, double-dates that always ended poorly, if not disastrously.

So this was... new. Dating. Being on a date. With a girl. Lady. Woman.

That he’d slept with, just a few days before. When he closed his eyes, he could still feel the ghost of her hands on him, the ache of the marks she’d left.

“Steve,” she said, looking down at her cup of cocoa that they’d purchased from a street-vendor.

He startled out of his thoughts. “Yes?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just like saying it. _Steve_. It’s a nice name.” She looked up at him with a sheepish smile. She packed so much strength into her body that he kept being surprised at how tiny she was. Her eyelashes were full of snowflakes and the scarf around her neck looked soft and warm.

“Well, I guess my Ma’d agree with you. Can’t say I’ve thought too much about it.” He grinned a little, crooked. “At least I didn’t get saddled with a name like Bucky’s.”

“Hmmm,” she said. “I guess all your people are gone, now, too, aren’t they? Must suck for you, being all alone in the modern world.”

“Pretty much,” he agreed. “Some days are better than others.” He glanced over, met her gaze briefly, and looked ahead again, feeling the blush climbing his cheeks.

“I always feel a little lost, you know,” Jess said. “Lost my whole family in a car accident when I was fourteen. I mean, I got fostered, but that was because Trish’s mom was trying to do some good press work for her child-actress daughter and I was unconscious. Got hit by a truck when I had a mom, a dad, and a baby brother. Woke up with Mommy-dearest and Trish as a sister. Surreal. Dot never expected me to wake up, actually. Thought it would be… charity work or something.”

Steve grimaced. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, because he was. He’d had a little time to prepare for his ma’s death. Not a lot, because she hadn’t wanted him to worry about her, but there had been a few days. He’d been able to say goodbye.

“Thanks,” she said. “I don’t even know why I told you that; it’s not really good first date conversation, but… I only lived through it because of my… powers. And you know, sometimes I wish I hadn’t woken up at all, and you might be the only person I know who can understand that.”

“No, it’s good,” he said. “It’s nice to know we’ve got that in common. The waking up and finding the whole world is different and wishing sometimes...” He couldn’t quite say it out loud. “Yeah.”

“Also, it seems really unfair that I know practically everything about you -- well, about Captain America, because I’m really seeing that you’re not that person, not underneath -- and you don’t know anything about me. Well, you might, if you dig around a bit. I did the super-hero thing for a while. I wasn’t very good at it, though.”

“I looked you up,” Steve admitted. Well, he’d had JARVIS do it for him. He hadn’t really wanted to pry, but he’d been fooled by friendly faces in the past. He wanted to make sure she was what she seemed.

“Don’t _even_ talk to me about the costume, okay? That was totally Trish’s fault, and I could kill her.”

Steve laughed, and it felt good. Warm, even in the snow. “I won’t talk about yours if you don’t talk about mine,” he said.

“Oh, did you just make an off-color joke, Steve? Oh, my _stars and garters_ , I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!” She was practically tripping over her feet with the giggles.

Steve smiled, bashfully pleased at the teasing. “Reckon there’s more than a few things about Steve Rogers that might shock you, if all you know is Captain America,” he said.

“I look forward to being educated, then,” she said. Jess tossed her empty cup at a trash can almost forty feet away and whooped when it swished directly into the opening.

“Never been with anyone that I didn’t have to be... careful with,” he said after a moment. “It’s nice.”

“Well, I’m not bullet-proof or anything,” she said. “Still hurts. It all _hurts_ ; that’s damned annoying sometimes. But yeah, that asshole stabbed me the other night and it was all better before we even got in the shower. And I don’t have to be careful with you, either. It _is_ nice. To be able to move around without, you know, injuring anyone.”

“Kinda hard on the furnishings,” Steve said ruefully.

She nodded. “My landlord hates me. The fees I’m going to have to pay if I ever get a new place. Totally lost my security deposit.”

Steve wondered if he should offer to pay for the repairs he’d helped cause. The rules had changed so much, and he hadn’t known them very well to begin with. “Next time, we should, uh, at the Tower,” he said. “My place there is, um, built for my strength.”

Jess pressed her lips together into a thin line and for a moment, Steve thought she was angry, that he’d drastically overstepped, made assumptions that maybe he shouldn’t have.

“Next time?” she asked. She smiled, wide and beautiful, and her brown eyes were amused. “Good to know. Wasn’t sure if I… well, I’ve got poor impulse control and you… seemed a little overwhelmed, at first.”

“Been a while,” he said. “But it was fun. I’d like to, if you’re agreeable.” He slanted a look at her sideways, still a little uncertain.

“ _Agreeable_? Have you looked at yourself in the mirror, cowboy?” She stood up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Which, weirdly enough, doesn’t seem to be quite enough, because I find myself wanting to _talk_ to you, too. So… yeah. I guess you could say I’m agreeable.”

Whatever he was going to say next disappeared as she whirled around, staring at something over her shoulder. “Shit. We’ve been made. Paparazzi. I knew it was gonna happen, was just hoping it might take longer. Probably one of the guards. I made an entrance. Sorry.”

Steve shrugged. “Kinda part of my life, now. Tony’s got his lawyers riding herd on most of the local places so there’s a limit to how close they’re allowed to get to the Tower. But there’s always sort of a... a fairy ring of ‘em about three blocks out, just waiting for one of us to wander out.” He grinned, then huffed a sigh. “Sorry to drag you into it.”

Jess snorted. “My best friend is _Trish Walker_. You know, the radio talk show host and former child star? Believe me, this is nothing new.” She shot a glare behind them again, then grabbed his hand. “Come on, bet we can outrun the son of a bitch.”

And so they did, laughing as they ran; she wasn’t nearly as fast as he was, but she did these graceful leaps where she’d clear about fifty feet in a single bounce, in which she’d let his momentum carry her along, until they were halfway across the park. They were shielded by the trees and there was a clean, thick blanket of snow on the hill below them.

With a grin, Jess took one of her floating steps and landed on her back in the snow drift. “Snow angel!” She waved her arms and scissored her legs, spreading the snow out everywhere.

“Clearly the snow doesn’t know you very well,” Steve joked. He couldn’t fly, but his jumps were nearly as impressive as hers, and he twisted, landing next to her and sending an absolute blizzard of flakes into the air.

“That was more like a cannonball,” she fussed, sitting up in the middle of her snow angel, brushing a dusting of flakes off her face. Her cheeks were so pink and her lips were pursed in a little bow and Steve couldn’t resist; he leaned over and kissed her. She smirked against his mouth, kissing him back, her cold nose rubbing against his cheek.

Jess lay back and cleared her snow angel again, staring up at the swirling snow still coming down, and Steve matched his own snow angel, which was quite a bit taller than hers. When they stood up and looked, she shook her head. “You are a beast, Steve Rogers,” she said.

“Not my fault you didn’t eat your vegetables, growing up,” he said, though she was actually a little taller than he’d been, pre-serum.

Jess stuck her tongue out at him, then pulled out her cellphone and snapped a picture of the snow angels. She tucked her phone in her pocket, and linked her arm with Steve’s again. They turned back to the park and she stopped dead. Reaching out, she smacked something out of the air right in front of his face -- a snowball.

Steve gaped at her as the snowball exploded into flakes, spraying him with debris. He scanned the park, _there_!

Jess was already gathering ammo, rolling snowballs with quick, precise movements. She tossed them to Steve, and he pegged three in a row, _pow pow pow_ , at their target. Less than thirty seconds later, a snowball burst across the back of his head, snow scattering down the back of his shirt.

“We’re surrounded!” Jess yelled, whirling on -- of course it was Clint -- and her shots were quick, accurate, and deadly. Within seconds, Clint had a faceful of snow, and Bucky was on them from the other side, using a tree for cover. Jess ducked behind Steve’s legs, scraping snow together. “Cover me!” She took four running steps, leapt over Bucky’s head and came down right behind him, dropping her entire batch of snowballs right on his head.

“Holy hell, Stevie,” Bucky said, staring at Jess, his hair coated in a thick cap of flakes. “You didn’t tell me she could fly.”

“I didn’t tell you _anything_ ,” Steve pointed out. “You insinuated a bunch of crap, as I recall, jerk.”

“Punk,” Bucky snorted. “Hello, there.” He beamed his light-up-the-room smile at Jess. “I’m Bucky, and that’s Clint over there, still getting snow out of his eyes.”

“Funny,” Jess said. “I pretty clearly heard your name was Jerk.” She offered her hand when Bucky laughed, and rather than shake, he brought her fingers up to his nose, sniffed, then kissed the back of her hand.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Steve said, knocking Bucky aside. “Try to behave for once in your life.”

“I am behaving,” Bucky said, shameless. “I’m behaving _badly_.”

“Jess,” Steve said with a sigh. “Meet the twelve-year-olds. James ‘Bucky’ Barnes and Clint Barton. Children, this is Jessica Jones.”

“She’s good,” Clint said, finally getting the rest of the snow out of his hair, shivering slightly.

“Eh,” Jess shrugged. “More like chaotic bitchy, really. Meetcha, Hawkeye.”

“So,” Bucky said, scraping his foot in the snow, “Tony’s ordering Thai for dinner, if you and Stevie didn’t have any other plans…”

“First date, Buck,” Steve said, gritting his teeth. “I know you think Tony hung the moon, but he’s a bit much for that.”

Clint nodded. “He’s got a point there. Tony might scare her off a second date.”

Jess rolled her eyes as if she couldn’t decide which one of them she wanted to smack first. “What? Am I getting a shovel talk here, too?”

Bucky grinned, sharp and feral. “Oh, no. That’s solnyshko’s job. I wouldn’t get in the way.”

The mere thought of what Natasha might say -- or _do_ \-- by way of a shovel talk took Steve’s breath away. “That… that could be very bad.”

Jess huffed. “I feel like I’ve dropped into a bad novel where I haven’t read the first few chapters.” She flicked her fingers at Bucky and Clint. “It was… interesting to meet you. But you heard the man; we’re on a date. So shoo.”

 


	6. So Late So Soon

> “How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”  
>  \-- Dr. Seuss

Steve didn’t have a lot of experience dating, but he’d spent a couple of years watching Tony fail miserably at his relationship with Pepper, which had taught him a lot of things _not_ to do.

The first time he brought Jess flowers, she laughed at him, called him adorkable, and then tackled him in the hallway when he revealed the bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue in his other hand. Malcolm stuck his head out of his apartment, eyed them rolling around on the cheap carpet, and muttered something about sound-proof headphones before closing the door again. The flowers were crushed and they were surrounded by the heavy scent of lilacs and jasmine.

Steve learned the locations of dozens of food carts around the city; Jess appeared to have a map in her head of the nearest place to get a cheap snack no matter where she was, having an appetite to rival his and Bucky’s, but not much money. She knew the best places to get hot dogs, chicken wings, and cheap burgers. She also couldn’t cook worth a damn and was extremely appreciative whenever he showed up at her place with a tote of ingredients and turned them into dinner. Plain, simple foods, but full of carbs and proteins.

She never asked him if she looked pretty, or if the jeans she wore made her look fat. Steve began to question the wisdom of using movies as a guide to dating.

Jess found out that he liked to draw and let him sketch her nude, completely and blatantly shameless. He discovered she used to play the piano and he dragged her up to the conservatory where Tony’s mom’s piano was mostly just a display item and she treated him to a few, halting and stuttering performances, although she knew the entirely of "Stairway to Heaven" note perfect.

Steve didn’t know how to dance at the clubs; Jess didn’t know the Lindy Hop or the Charleston. Both of them were, however, exceptionally agile and they looked pretty together. She liked the jazz club better (they had better drinks, not watered down so much) and Steve was in a state of perpetual mortification the entire time they were clubbing at the (lack of) clothing most people wore inside.

And then there was the sex. Lots and lots of it.

Steve was firmly taken aside by Natasha at one point -- literally yanked by his ear -- and reminded of the whole “no sex in the common areas” rule that had originally been put in place by Clint of all people, who was tired of dropping in on Tony and Bucky involved in less-than-discreet blow jobs in the kitchen, or any of a hundred other things he’d wandered in on by accident and then proceeded to describe. Vividly. At dinner.

Natasha also reminded Steve that the W.C. closest to the movie room was still public, too. They had been watching a particularly racy movie ( _Shoot ‘em Up_ , Steve thought it was called, which made even Steve want to complain about their bending of the laws of physics, a sport generally reserved for the resident geniuses) and Jess had dragged Steve into the bathroom with her. She’d gotten on her knees for him and then he’d fingered her to completion on the sink. When they’d walked out of the bathroom, looking well-sated and messy, Tony’d had his phone camera already out and rolling. And then he’d posted it to the Avengers Facebook page, where it promptly got about ten thousand likes. Tony’s project Break the Internet was deemed a success and Steve took care to be just a little more discreet after that.

***

The first time Steve stopped by her apartment after she’d visited the Tower, Jess was snappy and angry and finally flung her hand around at the tatty furniture, the ugly walls, the battered flooring. “Why are you even here?” she demanded, eyes flashing. “I know I said you were slumming it, but I had… you really are trolling the trash, aren’t you?”

“That’s hardly fair, Jess,” Steve said. “I didn’t even live there until a couple months back. Tony… well, it’s Tony’s building and he has trouble with big gestures. You could fit four or five of the apartments that I grew up in into the space Tony’s given us all and rattle ‘em around. I’m not any more used to living in a luxury apartment than you are. I grew up in the Great Depression; my dad died in the War before I was even born. I knew dirt that had more money than we did. This… this is what it is, Jess, and it hasn’t got anything to do with… us.”

Jess sighed. “I don’t want to have the relationship talk right now, Steve. I’m feeling small and pathetic and I can’t decide if I want to throw you out--” No idle threat; Steve was willing to bet she could actually put him out on his ear if she really wanted to. “--or take you to bed and use your dick to pump up my ego.”

It wasn’t funny, but Steve laughed, bitter and jagged. “Whatever you need, Jess.”

“God, you’re such a fucking boy scout,” Jess snapped.

Steve snorted. “I wouldn’t have been in the Boy Scouts,” he said. “My best friend is as queer as a three-dollar bill.”

The tension broke and Jess laughed. It was high and tinged with pain and panic and despair, a cocktail of emotion that Steve tasted from time to time on his own tongue. “You should go. I’m no good company tonight.”

“You don’t have to be good company for me to want to be here, Jess,” Steve said. “You know that, right? Only reason for me to go is if you want me gone.”

Jess sighed, deflating and looked that much smaller when she finished. “You’re a good guy, Steve Rogers. I got no fucking clue what you’re doing here, but… if you want to stay, stay.”

She flicked on the television and they watched something boring with all the violence and swearing censored out, and she eventually fell asleep on his shoulder. When Steve woke up in the morning, he was the big spoon on her tiny sofa and she’d pulled a hand-knitted blanket over them.

***

There were people Jessica hated more. She kept a list. The order shifted from time to time, although Kilgrave hadn’t yet been knocked out of the top slot, and probably never would. Her foster mother, Dot Walker, spent quite a number of years meandering between second and third place. But Tony Stark had been somewhere in the top ten ever since the accident. Logically, she knew it wasn’t his fault that her parents were dead. Her dad had worked for Stark when the young heir was just taking over the company, and Stark had given the family tickets to Disney. That fateful trip had ended with three graves and a six-month-long coma.

But Jessica barely had a congenial relationship with logic in the first place, and hating Tony Stark had been safe when she was fourteen. Not so much now that she was twenty-six, but it was so ingrained, she had trouble remembering that it wasn’t fair.

She tried to play nice when she was at the Tower, for Steve’s sake. Steve had to work with the man, and for whatever reason actually seemed to even like him, most of the time. But it was hard, especially when Stark called her a fucking _mercenary_. He’d also called her a _menace_. He apparently forgot that more than half the residents of his building had enhanced senses; either that or loud was just his default state.

And now he was offering her _charity_?

“I _have_ a job,” she grated, her fingernails pressing into the palms of her hands.

“Best time to job-hunt is when you’re already employed,” Stark said briskly, not even looking at her as he pried open one of Clint’s trick arrowheads with the tip of a screwdriver. “Stronger bargaining position. Anyway, this is a solid deal. No worrying about who you’re really working for, good bennies, the works.”

Jessica coughed into her hand. “Hydra.”

Stark looked up, just for a moment, eyebrow raised. “Technically, I never worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. I was a consultant for Fury.”

“Does that help you sleep better?” Jessica rolled her eyes. She couldn’t decide if she was more annoyed by his brash confidence or his occasional weird vulnerabilities. She was generally happier when she could kick someone and not worry about their feelings. Stark’s were like a bear trap hidden under leaves.

“No, but having an ex-brainwashed, ex-Hydra assassin to cuddle with warms the cockles of my cold, black heart,” he sniped. “I’m trying to offer you the opportunity to do something good in the world, here, Jones.”

“ _I do good_ ,” she snarled between her clenched teeth. “Where were the Avengers when Hope was in jail for being mentally controlled into killing her parents? When Kilgrave was terrorizing Hell’s Kitchen? Someone’s gotta look out for the little guys who fall in the way of villains. We can’t all save the world. And sometimes the world doesn’t need saving.”

She’d tried the superhero route before; it had ended badly. Badly enough that she was missing another eight months of her life. Then Kilgrave had gone on a rampage to get her back that had resulted in dozens of dead and mind-controlled people, people who were traumatized for the _rest of their lives_ , just for picking him up on the side of the road, or being in the way. Jessica herself had killed an innocent woman because Kilgrave had made her, that she’d been bound and shackled and controlled and none of that would have ever happened if she’d just been _normal_.

She couldn’t imagine a worse fate than being an Avenger. The kind of responsibility that came with that title would drown her in remorse, even worse than she already was. Kilgrave had made her responsible for too many deaths already, and it was eating her alive. If she failed with the Avengers, on the same scale, she’d be broken and climb inside the bottle and never come out. No, thank you.

“Sure,” Stark said, smile just a bit too toothy. “Good of you to look out for the little guys for two hundred a day plus expenses. I just thought you might like to be a little closer to your boyfriend.”

“I made Alias Investigations,” she said. “I built it from the ground up, all by myself. I’m not going to give that up because I happen to be fucking Captain America. Sorry you don’t get that, Stark. It’s _mine_. It’s the only thing that ever has been.” And she turned on her heel and walked off.

***

Bucky pushed away from the table, sighing. “You know, Stevie, I’ve waited seven _decades_ to go on a successful double-date with you and it’s not going to happen because Jess and Tony are like oil and water and they both brought _napalm_.” He laughed, shaking his head, his hair falling in his face.

Steve seemed oddly unconcerned. “Tony takes a while to get used to,” he pointed out. “And Jess can be a bit prickly. They’ll work it out eventually.”

Bucky snorted. “Sure, if they don’t blow up the Tower in the process.”

***

Steve plucked the bottle from her hand and set it aside. Jess had fallen asleep while drinking, again. He shook his head.

“Why do you drink so much, sugar?” he asked, not expecting an answer.

She cracked open one eye. “Because it hurts,” she said, her voice soft and somehow vulnerable and young.

“What does?”

“Everything.”

***

Steve rolled over and took the blanket with him. Jessica woke as the rush of cold air covered her; sleeping with Steve was like laying on a hot water bottle. But when he moved, she was completely aware of it. Not only was he a blanket thief, but he took all the heat with him.

Jessica grumbled and wormed closer, snuggled into the heat pocket his body had left behind. She was just drifting back to sleep when he muttered, his voice unintelligible, but panicked. She nudged him in the back with her elbow, but he didn’t wake.

“... hang on…”

Jessica rubbed at her sleep-weary eyes, grit and dreams clinging to her eyelashes. “Steve?”

He was both shivering and sweating, every muscle taut. “... grab my hand…”

He flailed, and she had to duck away from his arm to avoid getting hit in the head. “Steve!” Jessica grabbed his shoulder and shook, harder than she’d risk with a normal -- she’d always woken Trish from nightmares before by throwing pillows, so that she wouldn’t hurt her foster-sister by accident. Steve flinched and groaned, and Jessica shook him again. “Steve!”

Steve sat up with a start, panting for breath like he’d been running races. “Jess.” He said her name with a gasp, shivering, eyes blinking in the dim light -- there was no darkness in her apartment, her drapes were for shit and there was always street light coming through. He turned his face away from her, wiped at his eyes.

“Bad dreams?” she said, not touching him.

“‘M fine,” he said, still not looking at her, pulling his legs up to his chest and wrapping his arms around his knees. “Sorry to wake you.”

Slowly, like approaching a wounded animal, Jessica curled around his back, listening to his rapid breathing, the pounding heart. “S’why I drink,” she said. “I drink enough, I don’t have nightmares.”

“Wish I could,” Steve said. He drew a shuddering breath, then said, “I don’t... Don’t want to talk about it, Jess.”

“I won’t push,” Jessica said, soothing. “But I can help you forget about it.”

Steve rubbed his cheek again and she caught a glimpse of the shimmer of tears on the back of his hand. “Oh?”

“I’m up,” she said, running a hand down his bare spine. “And you’re up. And it’s the middle of the night. Nothing else to do.” She pressed against him, kissing the back of his neck, just by the base of his hairline, which she knew gave him the shivers.

“Jess.” He said her name like a prayer and turned, taking her down to the mattress under him, one hand grabbing her wrist and roughly thrusting it between his legs. She responded instantly, wanting and needing.

She _needed_ him. He _needed_ her. And neither of them wanted to admit it, even in intimate moments like these, so they did what they knew best, and gave all of themselves to the lust that surged between them, a demon and a beast of its own accord. They were used to going it alone, and even together, they were solitary creatures, each of them unable to bend, pushed past the breaking point.

She clawed at him, and he bit her, again and again, and they thrust together, sweat and effort, harsh cries and soft sighs and she came for him in the halflight, lifting him up with her strength and he held her down with his, forcing pleasure on her, driving her toward it again and again until she was limp and he was sated.

Jessica lost track of the number of times they changed positions, the number of times he came inside her, the number of times he drew ecstasy from her body. Somewhere, in the gray and black, inside the dreams and against their nightmares, they came together one final time and collapsed, breathless, on the bed.

“I… I love you.”

And in the morning, Jessica couldn’t remember which one of them had said it.  
  


 


	7. When Necessity Arises

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: This chapter earns the fic its "Torture" tag; skip to the end notes if you want to know what you're getting into or to skip it entirely and get a summary instead.

> “What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises—no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting.”  
>  \-- Frank Herbert, Dune

Like all Christmases, Jessica spent this one with her family, at least for a little while. There wasn’t much holiday spirit in a graveyard (or even spirits, although she held out hope that one day the ghosts of her parents might descend on her, but they never did), aside from the bottle of whiskey she’d brought with her. She sat there for half the day, starting later in the morning -- Trish had badgered her into a holiday brunch, and promised mimosas, which Jessica thought was rather kind. So she’d showed up for Belgian waffles and champagne tainted by orange juice, before heading for the cemetery. She wasn’t the only one there -- there were occasional individuals or families who came to put Christmas wreaths on a headstone, sometimes talk for a few moments, and then leave again. Jessica was the only one who sat there for most of the day, though.

Two cemetery workers passed by, hauling a heavy something, but Jessica wasn't really paying attention. They didn’t try to talk to her, and she was dimly grateful for that. Her focus was on her whiskey bottle, and thoughts of her brother, and her plans to have a piece of pie and eggnog with Steve (and incidentally the rest of the Avengers).

Suddenly, she was soaking wet, and outrage flashed across her mind like lightning.

Then the shock stick hit her, electricity crackling across her skin as if to underscore the comparison. That _hurt_ , fuck fuck. And she was cold now, already shivering in the biting wind that she’d barely noticed before.

She whirled, trying to get her bearings. Someone stabbed her, fast and hard, once twice three times, _wham wham wham_. Her confused brain kept coming back to how _cold_ she was… and suddenly she understood.

They knew who she was. They were inhibiting her healing. She lashed out, but it was already too late. They were using the shock stick to drive her. Another bucket of water sluiced over her and she stumbled back away from it. Before she could recover, rough hands shoved. She staggered and fell. Doors slammed and a latch clicked into place before she could recover enough to look up and realized that she had been locked inside a fucking _refrigerator truck_.

Cold, she was _so cold_. Blood spotted her clothes from the stab wounds. They were already healing, but that was leeching heat even further from her skin. She couldn't focus, couldn’t _think_. She scrambled for her phone in her jacket but couldn't find it. She must have dropped it in the confusion. The floor and walls were colder than the air, so she climbed to her feet, despite the swaying movement of the truck.

Her head checked out. It was tired of this shit. In her mind, she was in the Tower. Steve's arm was around her while they watched _The Grinch Who Stole Christmas._ Steve had eggnog on his upper lip and she kissed it off. Stark cracked some joke that Steve blushed at and--

“Where is the Starfire Sceptre, Miss Jones?” a man asked. Not Steve. Fuck. Not the Tower. _Fuck_.

She didn't answer and she was shocked again. She lost her footing and fell back to the frost-rimed floor inside the truck. The water on her jacket was freezing to the ice. So cold.

Steve.

“Who is Steve?”

Crap. She'd said that out loud? But if they didn't know who he was, maybe…

“Boyfriend,” she choked out and started to cry, weakly. Let them think they'd broken her.

The shock stick came down again and she pulled herself as far back into her head as she could, went away from the things that were happening to her body.

***

Someone -- either Bucky or Clint, if Steve was going to put money on it -- had changed his ringtone again. Billy Joel’s “You May be Right” had been replaced with Fitz and the Tantrum’s “Break the Walls.” Steve rolled his eyes. Jess was at least an hour later than she'd said she would be, but she was probably in the lobby now, waiting for an escort up.

“Hey, sugar,” he said, getting to his feet, “I'll be right--”

“You have something that belongs to us,” a modulated computer voice said. _Click_.

The phone beeped, accepting a text.

It was a video file. Steve stepped all the way into the hall, knowing that he didn’t want to see this, but wanting the others to see it even less.

Jess was barely dressed; her white tee was drenched and her legs were bare. Her arms were bound behind her, and anonymous hands shoved her face first into a tank of iced water, and held her down. There was no sound. Steve was grateful for it, because she came up screaming and coughing.

Jess struggled. She managed to bully herself to her feet as she shot a look of pure hatred in the general direction of the camera. Then she bent and executed a perfect scorpion kick despite her bound hands. It clipped the thug in the chin, and he fell face-first into the ice bucket with a dead splash.

For just an instant, Steve was positive that this was going to backfire on the kidnappers and that she was going to get away. Then another stepped forward and hit her soaking flesh with a shock stick. She went down, and stopped moving. The video went still, captured on her slack face pressed against the wet, icy floor.

Steve gagged, feeling water close in his throat, the overwhelming pressure of being held down and drowned, slowly freezing and unable to move.

The phone rang again. _Hey! Break the walls!_

“Get your fucking hands off her,” Steve hissed into the phone.

“You have something that belongs to us,” the same computer voice said.”We have something that belongs to you. The proposal on the table is an exchange. Go take a walk along the north bank of the reservoir in Central Park and bring it with you. Carry a blue bag and wear a red shirt, so we can identify you. Come alone. We will call you on this number with further instructions. You have one hour.”

“Let me talk to Jess. I want proof of life.”

“She’s in no condition to talk,” the voice said. “But I will allow you to hear her scream.”

And in the background, Jess was screaming, a mix of anger and agony, punctuated by sharp swears from men, and ending with a strangled, “No, no, no, Steve, no, _trap_!” and more splashing sounds that went ominously silent.

Steve collapsed against the wall, eyes closed, listening to his heart beat a ragged, jerky tempo. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“You need someone on your six, Cap,” Clint said, dropping out of the vent, already armed, dressed in his tac-gear and holding a red shirt and a blue bag. “Sam’s getting geared up now.”

Steve sagged with relief. He wasn’t going to ask how Clint knew -- he was getting used to living with spies, apparently -- but he couldn’t ask for better backup. “You don’t think…”

“I try not to, but you’re young, Cap,” Clint said, “think all you like. But no. Winter Soldier’s not cleared for field work, and it’s Christmas. Let’s let the couples have their fun and us bachelors can go kick some ass, yeah? We’ll save your girl, and they can make breakfast for us in the morning.”

***

They weren’t entirely stupid, whoever the bad guys were. The first stop had Steve change out his phone for a burner and they made him drop his old one in the trash. Surely someone would pick it out later; which could be good, because Steve thumbed the StarkApp for auto-tracking. Unless they destroyed the phone, the tracker would stay on. Only a Faraday cage or EMP could disrupt JARVIS’s stealth tracking.

At the second stop, they’d changed out his phone again and forced him to strip down and change clothes in a public restroom. It was hard to think through the haze of fury and impatience, but Steve was glad that he hadn’t bothered to put on any gear; they hadn’t addressed him as Captain and they surely weren’t taking the sort of precautions that he would have considered urgent if they were aware that the Avengers were following them. He hadn’t seen Sam or Clint since the first swap, but he had no doubt they were keeping up. Hawkeye had shadowed Natasha for months with her unaware. And there was enough cloud cover that Falcon was probably hiding out in the mists and running a litany of complaints into Clint’s comm.

Steve struggled to keep to a normal pace; they were having him walk all over the city and if they weren’t clued in, he didn’t want to be the reason that they became so.

At the third stop, he got another video clip, the time stamp showing it had been filmed only about ten minutes before. Someone had slashed a series of ladder-like cuts up Jess’s leg. He watched, trying hard not to crush the burner phone, as she slowly, slowly, healed, breathing hard and her breath frosting the air. She was shivering so hard that she looked blurry, despite the sharp focus of the cracks in the wall behind her. She muttered constantly under her breath, “Cold, cold, cold, cold,” until at the very last second, she lifted her head to stare at the camera. “Steve, don--”

“She is fading, Steve. Better hurry,” the voice said. “Look up. There is a security camera to your left. Take the Starfire Sceptre out of the bag and show it to the camera. Be very sure of yourself. We have eyes on you now, and a long rifle trained on the back of your head.”

Steve had to grit his teeth to not look over his shoulder for the sniper. That familiar itch, of someone watching him, built up at the base of his spine.

Steve hoped Clint would restrain himself; Hawkeye took it personally when someone took aim at his teammates, but before they could start busting heads on the bad guys, they had to be sure they knew where Jess was.

“I wouldn’t be running late,” Steve said, voice shaking and not really caring whether they thought it was fear or the rage it actually was, “if you hadn’t dragged me all over the city. Where is she? I have your stupid toy.”

“Why did she give it to _you_?” the voice asked. “Why would a minor god turn over an item of power to a stupid, human jock?”

Steve suppressed a grim smile. “Have you seen where she lives? My apartment has better security.”

The kidnappers gave him another address and Steve groaned. They were going to kill Jess in their enthusiasm to keep her docile and she was going to die while he was traversing the length of the city three times at this achingly slow pace.

But he was still three blocks from that destination when a van pulled up beside him and a team of masked goons jumped out and grabbed him, dragged into the back. It was an effort not to fight back, not to let loose that rage and fear and hatred. Instead, he backed down when the guns came up and allowed them to roughly pat him down and scan him for bugs. At last they bagged his head and zip-tied his wrists together behind his back. He hoped to God they’d actually take him to Jess and not just try to shoot him here. He strained his ears for the sound of a gun safety being flicked off and mapped out their positions by the sounds of their breathing. If worst came to worst, he would have to remember to take prisoners so he could make them tell him where they were going.

The van ran smooth and even with enhanced hearing, Steve could barely hear the engine purr. This was a tactical van disguised for urban warfare, nearly identical to the fleets of SUVs that were so common in the city. These guys, whoever they were, were well funded.

Steve didn’t try to talk and his captors didn’t bother to address him. He closed his fists, twisting at the tie behind his back. Several strands of plastic, the zip ties worked well for the run of the mill criminal. They didn’t know who Steve was, but they were wary anyway; a dozen or more of the ties bound his wrists together. He could snap them easily, but even a top-end human wasn’t going to be able to brute-force his way through. Natasha would be able to manage it, probably. Steve rarely ran across the cage that could hold Nat for any length of time.

The van pulled into a building and parked.

They herded Steve out into air that was well below freezing, even below the cold nighttime normal of New York. The echoes of their footsteps as they touched down on the slippery floor told him they were in a large, mostly empty room. Steve let himself stumble until one of his captors roughly shoved him upright.

“Ah, delightful,” said a woman’s voice. “You have brought our other guest. Did he have the Sceptre?”

“One of your goons took it,” Steve said through the hood. “Where is Jess?”

“C’n I punch this guy in his perfect teeth?” a man asked, nearby, with the pained and mushy-mouthed tones of someone who’d recently taken a Jessica-Jones-sized fist to the face.

“Get them both,” the woman said. “We’ll make sure this is the real deal, and tie up any loose ends. Feel free to punch him, if you want. He’s served his purpose.”

The goon punched Steve, half a dozen times and Steve’s acting ability was strained nearly to the breaking point. Until Jess was in the room with him, he didn’t want to give up the game. Being hit by them didn’t hurt, exactly, but it was damned unnerving to be struck when he couldn’t see it coming. Thank God that he still bled, because they might have been suspicious if his skin didn’t tear.

Something hard slammed into the back of the head -- a pistol butt, maybe? -- and Steve dropped to his knees in a fall that was barely staged. He was trying to recover his balance when he heard Jess’s pained breathing an instant before she fell against him, wet and shivering.

“Hey cowboy,” she said. “Stupid enough to show up to this rodeo, are you?” She leaned against his shoulder and used her fingers to tap on his arm, counting out the bad guys for him. Tap, tap, tap, PRESS, tap tap tap, tap tap tap tap tap tap tap. Thirteen goons, one powered person.

“Can’t let you go for a ride without me,” he said. “You shake any?”

“Four, including that fucker who was trying to drown me.”

“Good girl.”

“Condescending ass,” Jess muttered and Steve grinned behind his hood. She was hurt, bad -- he could smell the blood on her -- but she was still sassing him, and that was a very good sign. “What are we waiting for, cowboy?”

“Rodeo clowns,” Steve said, and he could almost hear Clint huff out an annoyed breath at him. He flexed his arms, getting ready, and then the hiss of an arrow split the air, and they were on.

Steve broke free of the zip ties, snatched the bag off his head, and pushed Jess aside as the woman pointed the device at them. It melted a hole through the lined cement wall just over their heads instead. They’d be dead now if Steve had been a normal guy. He rolled, taking Jess with him, as the device powered up again. Jess yelled, angry and pained, as he crushed her bound arms; they had her arms literally wrapped with steel cables.

He directed his anger at the locks, tearing them free, one with each rotation, until they fetched up against the far wall and Jess slid her arms free. She wrenched her shoulder around, screamed as the ball went back into the socket.

Arrows whizzed through the air, then Clint yelped and dove from his nest as the woman directed a burst of pure sunlight at him. The steel beams melted and sagged, glowing cherry red.

Suddenly there were wings and Falcon swooshed in, catching Clint just before he struck the floor. Sam ran a few paces and then leaped back into the air, his autopistols coming into his hands. The racket of gunfire filled the air.

“You brought the cavalry?” Jess asked as they ran for cover.

“Well, the birdbros,” Steve said. Sam winged his shield to him like an overgrown frisbee and Steve felt ten times better the instant it touched his hand. “Tony’s a little loud for a stealth op, and Nat was already in her pyjamas.”

“Don't tell me you left Stark and Barnes alone with the pie,” Jess muttered. “I _need_ pie after this, Steve. And hot chocolate. And a goddamn blanket.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plot summary for those avoiding the torture or who want to know what they're getting into before reading: On Christmas day, Jessica visits her family's gravesite with plans to later join Steve at Avengers Tower. She is abducted by people looking for the Starfire Sceptre. Because her accelerated healing draws on her body heat and doesn't work well if she's cold, they torture her by holding her head under ice water and keep her in a freezing space, along with more genre-typical violence. The kidnappers call Steve to offer a trade: Jessica for the Sceptre. Steve, Clint, and Sam go to her rescue.


	8. Still Worth It

> “When a chance for real happiness comes by, grab it with both hands and devour it. If it lasts five minutes or five lifetimes, it's still worth it.”  
>  \-- Malorie Blackman, Checkmate

By the time Steve got Jess back to the Tower, she was practically crawling inside his shirt, her cold, tiny hands all over him, and not in a fun way; her skin was icy and covered in bruises. Steve carried her into the elevator. She’d tucked her fingers into his armpit and that was exceptionally uncomfortable, especially since the skin-to-skin contact didn’t seem to be warming her up at all.

“Sam, can you?” Steve said, jerking his chin toward the buttons.

“Medical?”

Steve shook his head. “I don’t think she’d like that,” he said. “And she’s asleep.”

“Steve,” Sam said, looking at him with concern, “she’s _unconscious_. After being tortured for several hours. Maybe a doctor’s not the worst idea ever?”

“That’s just it, Sam,” Steve said, waiting until Sam sighed and thumbed the button for the communal floor. “I don’t want her to wake up with strangers; she doesn’t even know what’s happening right now. I… I can’t do that to her.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “And I thought _Clint_ was bad about medical. At least he’s not reluctant on anyone else’s behalf. I don’t know why you dumbasses even bother to _have_ a medical facility, I swear to god...”

Clint blinked, waking up from his half-doze against the elevator wall. “Huh? What am I taking blame for, this time?”

Sam punched Clint in the arm. “Being a goddamn idiot about medical and continuing to live through it so half the idiots in this building think that nobody’s got to see a damn doctor once in a while.”

“Fuck you,” Clint said, his eyes slipping closed. “I’m _invincible_. Everyone else is an idiot.”

The elevator stopped at the communal floor. Clint punched the button for his floor, yawning heroically. “Don’t wake me up for anything less important than an attack on the world’s coffee supply,” he said as Steve and Sam got off.

Sam glanced at Jess, still curled in Steve’s arms, and opened his mouth, but closed it before the words escaped. They’d had this discussion before, about how Steve didn’t have to be both _stubborn_ and _stupid_ just because the words started with the same two letters as _Steve_. “Alliteration doesn’t have to be a thing, Steve,” he’d said, several times. Now, he just said, “Have JARVIS wake me if you need anything, man.”

“I will,” Steve said. “Thanks for… everything.”

Sam nodded, then stepped into the elevator that Clint had sent back down for him. The sun was creeping in through the window, lighting up the fresh snow outside. Steve used his hip to push the sofa closer to the firepit. “Hey, hey, sugar,” he said, laying Jess down on the sofa. “I’m gonna get a fire started, okay? Just hang on, a bit longer. Everything will be okay, I promise.”

He snagged a blanket from the back of the couch and tucked it around her. Her skin was still so pale, like ice, and she was bone-deep shivering. She peered at him, her dark eyes not quite opening all the way, and Steve wasn’t sure if she heard him or not.

The gas fire didn’t take long to get set up, but Steve whirled to a thump and had to grab Jess to prevent her from crawling into the grate. “Come on, Jess,” he said, pulling her back onto the sofa. “Let’s take it slow.”

“Fuck slow,” Jess muttered. She tugged at his shirt, her cold fingers trailing over his ribs, leaving gooseflesh in their wake. She managed to sit up long enough to peel out of her still damp shirt, pressing as much of herself against him as possible absorbing all his heat, and color slowly started seeping back into her skin, the faintest flicker of fire against a piece of paper.

Skin to skin contact, Steve remembered, was the best for warming someone up who was at risk for hypothermia.

“So cold,” Jess muttered, drawing her legs up.

“Hang on,” Steve said. He toed out of his boots and shucked his jeans, then peeled out of the shirt as he stretched out on the couch. She was on him in a second, laying across his chest and he pulled the blanket over them, letting her draw up as much of his body heat as possible. He let his eyes slide closed and tried to tell himself he wouldn’t sleep, but consciousness slipped away. He dreamed of ice and water and pressure.

Steve woke with a start. The sun was fully up, but still low -- he didn’t think he’d dozed for more than half an hour, and Jess was still icy against his skin. Bucky was hovering right over him, frozen in the act picking the blanket back up off the floor. Probably what had woken Steve in the first place.

Bucky gave Steve a small, reassuring smile as he started to spread it back over them, but then paused, staring at Jess’s bare arms and naked legs, dotted with bruises and cuts and electrical burns. “What the shit, Stevie?” Bucky said, voice pitched at a low enough register that Jess didn’t even stir. He draped the blanket back over them.

Jess reached out, eyes still closed, and latched onto Bucky’s flesh arm. “Warm,” she murmured.

Bucky’s eyebrows went way up and he looked back at Steve. “Seriously, what the hell?”

“She got snatched last night,” Steve said, trying to sum up, wishing Bucky would stop looking… however it was that he was looking. Steve couldn’t quite place his finger on the expression and it was pissing him off. “She’s got enhanced healing, like us, but instead of just needing to eat, it kills her body temperature. She’s freezing. She’s been cold since we got her back. They… they were…” _Torturing her._ It was so hard to say it, so hard to _remember_ it.

“Fuckers tried to drown me in an icebath,” Jess said, not opening her eyes. “Come here.” And she yanked, pulling Bucky over onto the sofa with them. Steve grunted as he took two-hundred and fifty pounds of super-soldier right through the elbow Jess had accidentally planted in his stomach.

Bucky coughed, face going red. “Um. Awkward?”

Jess sighed, contentedly snuggling into the small space between them. “Oh, he’s hot. Nice.”

Bucky squeezed the bridge of his nose. “You know, Tony is going to kill me if he sees a super-soldier sandwich that he’s not the creamy filling for.”

“ _Buck_!” Steve gasped, feeling the blush crawling up his throat and cheeks. “Get off.”

Bucky hummed thoughtfully, adjusting his position a little. “You know, I don’t think I will,” he said. “Snuggle therapy is good for you.” He shifted his left arm to the back of the sofa, keeping the cool metal away from Jess’s skin.

“This is not snuggling,” Steve protested. “It’s a pile-on and you’re _heavy_. Get up, get up.”

“If you keep squirmin’ around down there, I just might,” Bucky said, his lips twisting into a self-satisfied little smirk.

“Tony is a bad influence on your mouth,” Steve complained.

“What was that, Capcicle?” Tony asked, turning around the corner. “Oh. Oh, my, that’s a lovely picture right there. Why are we dogpiling Steve?”

Bucky had the cheek to look offended. “We’re not piling on _Steve_. We’re helping _Jessica_. She’s injured and hypothermic.”

Tony nodded thoughtfully. “I see.” He sipped at his coffee. “JARVIS?”

“Sir?”

“Could you assemble the Avengers? We need a cuddle pile in the common room, stat.”

“No, Tony,” Steve groaned, covering his face with his hand.

“Tony, yes,” Tony said, winking at Bucky.  Bucky shot Tony a dirty look and muttered something in Russian that made Tony cackle as he gathered up all the pillows, cushions, and blankets in the room, stacking them in front of the sofa. “Come on, there’s not going to be enough room for everyone up there. We’ll make an epic blanket-nest on the floor.”

Nastasha was the next into the room, carrying a stack of fluffy blankets. She was wearing a long t-shirt and bunny slippers. “Who are we cuddling?”

Tony gestured to the sofa. “The mayo, apparently.”

Natasha gave Tony a Look, capital letters, and whomped him with the blanket stack. “Don’t be rude,” she said.

“Do you even _know_ me?” Tony quipped, finishing off his coffee. He tugged his tie loose and dropped it on a chair, unbuttoned his top and let his shirt hang open, then took up a spot on the pile of cushions, patting his lap. “C’mere, soldier.”

Jess mumbled when Bucky moved off her and didn’t even open her eyes, rolling off the sofa to sprawl on the cushions, obviously aware on some level of what was going on, even if she couldn’t really talk coherently. Tony, Bucky, and Steve ended up forming the bottom layer of what would be Jess’s resting spot, her head and arms curled up in Steve’s lap (it didn’t escape his attention that both Tony and Natasha eyed his bare legs with equally coy grins, and he was blushing again, but tried to ignore it.)

Bruce followed soon after, looking sleepy and slouchy in a pair of his ugly purple sweatpants, his hair in serious disarray. Bruce’s curls did some amazing corkscrews, and he rubbed sleep from his eyes before settling on Tony’s far side, with Natasha half in his lap and half in Tony’s.

Clint and Darcy came in next. Darcy was grinning and wearing an enormous scarf in many different colors that wrapped a few times around her neck and then hung to the floor. “The doctor is in the house,” she announced, throwing her hands up, which made Tony and Bruce snigger, and Clint high-fived her still-upraised hands. “But first--” She grabbed Clint’s arm and tugged him toward the kitchen. “--hot chocolate for everyone. Get the travel mugs. Hot cocoa is not fun when worn.”

Thor flopped down on the pillows before Steve even realized he was in the room, nearly knocking everyone over in his enthusiasm. “Hey! Get off my foot,” Tony complained, yanking his leg back and then propping both feet up on Thor’s massive thighs, leaning back into the sofa. “It’s like an Escher, but with more snuggling. Okay, this is nice. I can do this.” He leaned over onto Bucky’s shoulder and drew Jess’s feet into his lap.

“She does seem to be warming up,” Steve admitted, not meeting anyone’s gaze because this was just so weird but at the same time, completely sweet and caring and… He blinked furiously, his eyes scratchy.

Jane came in, wearing apparently nothing but Thor’s Christmas sweater from the previous day, her arms filled with brightly colored, round stuffed animals. “Finally, a use for all these things that Darcy collects.”

“I heard that, Foster,” Darcy protested from the kitchen. “It’s Erik’s fault. He bought the first one and then, they just… they’re so _cute_ , and I just...”

“Bought over fifty of them. I know,” Jane said with dry, fond amusement, tossing the fuzzy balls around. Steve caught a… round stuffed cow? Okay, sure. When she’d finished, Jane plopped down next to her godly boyfriend, drawing her knees up and pulling a tablet out -- Steve wasn’t sure from where -- to poke at it.

“No extradimensional physics before breakfast,” Darcy said, snatching the tablet and handing Jane a travel mug of cocoa, the picture on the mug solemnly swearing that it was up to no good. She and Clint passed out the rest of the mugs before getting settled in, themselves. Steve’s eyebrows raised in surprise when Darcy folded into Clint’s lap and Clint started absently playing with her hair. How long had that been going on?

The elevator opened one last time and Sam wandered in. He stopped dead near the cuddle pile, looking both exasperated and envious. “You know, Steve, I really did think she needed a doctor, not to be molested by the entire team.”

“Shut up,” Tony said, “and pull up some cushions, angelface. We need your body heat and hugs, not your smart mouth.”

Bucky snorted. “Yeah, Tony’s smart mouth is enough for any six normal people.”

“I am _wounded_ ,” Tony exclaimed. “Wounded and…”

“Stark,” Jess muttered from the bottom of the pile, sounding sleepy and content and Steve’s heart broke just looking down at her, beautiful and fragile-looking. “Be quiet. I’m tryin’ to sleep.” She shifted a bit, her arm going around Steve’s waist, her fingers warm finally, and she slid one hand down the back of his shorts, cupping his hip.

“You okay, sugar?” Steve asked her and she opened her eyes, looking up at him.

“I am laying on top of the three hottest guys on the planet,” she pointed out, “and there is a _literal god among men_ taking up real estate on my left. I don’t really think it gets better, so you’d better reassure me that I haven’t died and gone to heaven.”

“Does she think someone else is down here, or what?” Tony muttered, patting the back of Jess’s calf. She promptly kicked him in the chin, fortunately not hard.

“You’re not dead,” Steve said, carding his fingers gently through her tangle of black hair. “You’re gonna be fine.”

Sam turned on the television, then kicked off his shoes and joined the group, resting his head on Darcy’s knee and propping his legs over Jane’s lap. The channel flared to life and the soft black and white movie snapped into focus, with Donna Reed and James Stewart on the screen in the beginning scenes of _It’s a Wonderful Life._

And for the rest of the morning, it really was.

***

Jess warmed up. Darcy kept fetching hot chocolate, and eventually Steve had to get up, because enhanced or not, even he had to take a piss once in a while. And to take a quick timeout to eat the rest of one pie -- there was not quite half of it left, and whoever had gotten it out last hadn’t remembered to put it back, so it was totally fair game.  ****By the time he got back, Bucky and Jess were twined together like kittens, sound asleep.

Tony was in the process of extricating himself from the pile, carefully maneuvering out from under the assortment of legs and arms in his lap and wound around his ankles. He stood and stepped out of the mass of people, picking his way across the floor with a delicate grace that Steve didn’t see in him often.

“Threw you over the instant you were gone,” Tony said in an amused undertone as he came closer to Steve. “Seduced by Bucky’s radiator-like qualities.” He cast a fond smile back over his shoulder.

“Honestly, I don’t know how you sleep at night, Tony,” Steve said. “I know you don’t like the word ‘moist’ but I felt like a cupcake coming out from under them.” He poked around in the couch for a while and recovered his jeans, stepping into them a little awkwardly.

“No blankets necessary,” Tony said cheerfully, and then his grin stretched into a leer. “Or clothes.”

Steve slanted a quick look at Tony, that familiar smug, sly, triumphant look on his face, the one he always had whenever he managed to make Steve blush. “Oh, c’mon, Tony,” he said, tipping his head to one side. “You think Jess is gonna let me sleep in a pair of _sweatpants_?”

Tony laughed. “Don’t think the question hasn’t been up for discussion when you two are out,” he said, still sly. Then his expression sobered and he looked back over at them. “Sorry we weren’t there to help,” he said, mouth twisting. “If we’d known...”

“I was going to go alone. They said _alone_ ,” Steve said. “But Clint is Clint, and I don’t even want to know -- although I highly suspect Nat had something to do with it, or maybe he just had his hearing aids turned way up.”

“I don’t think Natasha knew,” Tony opined. “There’s no way she’d have stayed here if she had. None of us would. Christmas or not, we’d have all suited up if you’d told us, you know that, right?”

Steve closed his eyes. “They were _torturing_ her, Tony. They were… making me watch it. I didn’t have time to think, didn’t want to. All I wanted to do was find them and make them stop. I didn’t have time to fight with Clint and Sam about it, so we went.”

Tony nodded. “I get it. I didn’t exactly bother to put out an APB when Killian took Pepper, either. It was... personal.”

“Very fucking personal,” Steve said, darkly. “They were drowning her in an ice bath, I didn’t have room in my head for all that -- I should have asked, but I was so scared of what would happen if they knew I wasn’t alone.”

Tony shuddered, his expression going shuttered and angry and haunted. “Yeah, I.” He shuddered again. “Long’s you know we _would’ve_ all come. If you’d needed us. She’s important to you; that makes her important to us.”

Steve glanced back at the sofa. Jess was wrapped around Bucky’s warmth, and Bucky’s nose was buried in her long hair. Steve was pretty sure he looked like a love-sick fool and twice as sure that he didn’t even care that Tony saw it. “Yeah, she’s something else, all right.”  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darcy and Jane's [round stuffed animals](http://www.squishable.com/). Beware, they're addictive.


	9. Looking for the Worst

> "The big part of the job is looking for the worst in people. Turns out I excel at that. Clients hire me to find dirt. And I find it, which shouldn't surprise them, but it does."  
> \--Jessica Jones

“You’re not cleared for field work, Buck,” Steve said, “and you know it. Now, if you can tell me honestly that you’re not at risk of being triggered, and mean it, then I’ll believe you, but…”

“Fuck,” Barnes swore, bringing his hand down flat against the conference table with a hollow boom.

“We’ve no choice, then,” Natasha said. “We have to split the teams. Yasha, you can serve as liaison within the Tower, coordinate security cameras, and analyze data with JARVIS. Yes, I know it it not your area of expertise, but it will be useful.”

“Sorry, babe,” Stark said, not quite looking at his boyfriend.

“Sam, Clint, you’re with Jess and me,” Steve ordered, transforming into the Captain right before Jessica’s eyes. “We’re already familiar with this enemy. Jessica, I know you’re not an official team member--” Jessica took careful note of the faint, disappointed ring in his voice. “--but I hope for the duration, you’ll work with us, and under my orders.”

Jessica pushed back in her chair, crossing her ankles and resting them on the table. “S’long as you don’t order anything stupid, I can probably remember.” Her mouth twitched a little when Stark laughed. The Avengers were good people; they worked well together, they took responsibility for each other. Maybe being part of a team would help ease the guilt, not add to it. Maybe, after this was over, she’d reconsider Stark’s offer; she wouldn’t have to be a full-time Avenger, after all. Stark still worked in R&D at Stark Industries. She could consult with the Avengers, and still keep up with Alias, right? And it would have been nice, she thought, to have had some super powered backup when she’d gone against Kilgrave. Backup that could have shot him at a safe distance. Like Clint, whom she was becoming quite fond of, the big lug.

“That leaves Thor, Bruce, Natasha and Tony to go to Michigan and investigate the energy readings from the Verden Verktøy.”

“You know there’s like eight feet of snow in Michigan right now. Lake effect,” Stark said, consolingly, to Barnes. “I’m gonna freeze my ass off.”

Barnes glared and said something in Russian that had Natasha smiling behind her hand. Clint started using a rubber band to shoot paperclips at Barnes, making little _ping ping_ noises as they bounced off his metal arm. “No sex-talk at the conference table,” Clint complained.

“Shoot me again, birdbrain,” Barnes snapped. “I dare you.”

So, of course, Clint _had_ to take that dare, because apparently one of the qualifications for being an Avenger was an emotional maturity level of a twelve-year-old. In blur of motion, Barnes flicked the paper clip back across the table with unerring accuracy to punch a hole in Clint’s Starbucks cup. The table was immediately flooded with the disgustingly over-sugared glurge that Clint insisted on calling coffee.

Steve gave the room in general his Captain America is Disappointed With You face, and got on with the strategic meeting while Clint grumbled and mopped up the mess. She let her attention wander a bit, because Steve was filling the others in on the little bit they’d found out about that tattoo on the guys chasing her had. It was Natasha who’d recognized the symbol.

“Leviathan,” she had said, her face pale and eyes distant. “They’re the ones who originated the Red Room. Very active during post World War II and up through most of the Cold War on their own. Sometimes exchanged think-tanks with Hydra, and were later absorbed. I know Agent Carter tangled with them during her days at SSR.”

Steve had just nodded, his jaw working painfully.

Everyone started pushing away from the table and Jessica snapped her attention back to the room. Meeting adjourned; time to get to work. Finally.

Even if she wasn’t at all looking forward to their first task, which was going to interview a ninety-some year old ex-field agent, who just happened to be her current lover’s ex-girlfriend. And just to add to the delightful experience, Peggy Carter’s mind had started to go in the last decade or so. There was no way to tell if she was going to provide any useful information or if all she was going to do was hurt Steve by being _old_ , a thing she couldn’t help or do anything about.

***

Looking down at Peggy Carter was the first time it had really occurred to Jessica that she was sleeping with someone  that most people considered a national treasure. A possession of the United States; a symbol, more than a man. Little, tiny bit unnerving, really.

Peggy’s cheek was soft in the way that old people’s skin often was, a whisper of cobweb over a peach. If she looked hard, Jessica could still see the faint hints in her face of what had once been perfect English Rose beauty.

Steve was sitting at her side, his hand gently entwined with hers. They were speaking of trivialities: her last grandson’s visit, the picture her great-great-granddaughter had drawn that she’d had the nurse pin to the wall. An ancient anecdote about the time Peggy and her friend Angie had drunk so much gin and eaten so much pie with that they’d both been sick.

Steve’s face, normally so mobile and open, was shuttered. He was making all the right sounds and saying all the right things in response, but his shoulders were tense, hunched as if for a blow, his free hand clenching into a fist as if he wanted to do nothing more than punch Old Age in the face and make it leave her alone.

Jessica gave Steve’s shoulder a quick squeeze and walked to the window, giving them privacy, although she hardly knew what for. The English countryside was green, pretty, pastoral. Even the wilderness areas looked like they should be contained in a little park somewhere. Jessica had never been out of the country before and she felt just as gauche and naive as the European caricature of an American tourist. Out of place. What good were her skills going to do here? She had no contacts, no leverage.

On the table near the window was a collection of old photos. One, she recognized from a copy she’d seen in her history book: Steve Rogers before they’d injected him with all sorts of crazy chemicals and blown him up like a pufferfish. Strange, how much he looked _the same_ to her. Not the body, of course, but the face. The same stubborn chin and determined eyes. His hair falling in his face, the way it did when he first woke up in the morning (Jessica would have bet money on it being Natasha Romanov who had taught the man how to use hair product).

For an instant, she thought the next picture was a photoshop job, and then realized that, yes, Tony Stark really did look _that_ similar to his father; not a thing she had any intentions of mentioning to him. Howard Stark had an arm inappropriately low on Peggy’s waist and Steve, on the other side, looked like he was trying to pretend he wasn’t desperately uncomfortable.

Another photo: Peggy with a thin, proper-looking man carrying an umbrella and wearing a criminally ugly tie, even in black-and-white. Jessica picked up the frame, bringing it closer. The man stood slightly behind Carter, and just to her left, something subservient rather than protective in his stance. He wore a ring, she didn’t. Not the husband. The frame, a simple wooden piece, was heavier than it looked. Jessica bounced it idly against her palm, then with more attention as she felt something shift inside.

“That’s--” Peggy said a bit louder, then paused to cough. “That’s Mr. Jarvis, young miss. A good friend and a loyal ally.” Jessica couldn’t help it: she glanced up at the ceiling as if waiting for a familiar voice.

Steve mentioned something about Howard Stark, and the two of them went off again, speaking of people and times long before Jessica was born, stuff she’d studied in history class, for the love of God. She glanced over her shoulder, but Steve’s attention was on Peggy. The smile on his face was killing Jessica, peeling her skin away from her bones. She flipped the frame over, turning a little to block what she was doing, although she wasn’t stupid enough to think Steve wouldn’t hear her, if he was paying attention.

A twist of her fingers opened the frame. There was a small envelope inside, lumpy and heavy. She pocketed it, and had the frame re-assembled by the time Peggy got around to offering them tea.

***

Peggy had reminisced about Leviathan just a bit before going off on a long tirade about Howard Stark and how he had tricked her about the last remaining vial of Steve’s blood -- Steve had startled badly at this -- but her hazy memories hadn’t given them anything to go on. Eventually, she’d fallen asleep, mid-sentence, and Steve had kissed her forehead before walking away.

Clint had parked the Quinjet in the rolling horse fields of Peggy’s grandson’s home, a fact that bothered both the horses and the grandson. The grandson had gotten over it the instant Captain America walked down the ramp. The horses, not so much. They were still clustered in the far corner of the pasture, flicking their tails and shying away.

Steve strode up the ramp without saying a word, threw himself into his seat, and scrubbed at his face with both hands.

“No joy?” Sam asked, his hand hovering over Steve’s shoulder like he wanted to give him reassurance, but not quite daring.

“I don’t know what I was hoping for,” Steve admitted, leaning his head back against his chair, looking up at the ceiling as Clint did the pre-flights. “It was decades ago that she tackled Leviathan.”

Jess fished the envelope out of her pocket and opened it. Inside was a small brass key, a few numbers written on a slip of paper, and a photograph of…

“I know where we should look next,” Jess said. She held up the picture. “Stark Mansion.”

Steve blinked. “What the hell, Jess?”

“It’s called _investigating_ , Steve. I’m very good at it. Mr. Jarvis was Carter’s primary ally while she was in the S.S.R. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s shit is such a redacted, altered, and confusing pile of crap, but there were some notations to files that are missing from that time period; it’s why we went to the source. But--” She waved the key. “--annoying as he no doubt was, Howard Stark was no more apt to cooperate than Tony is. I’m betting there are some files there that have been kept out of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s computers.”

***

“You’re shitting me,” Clint said, not-inconsiderable arms crossed over his chest.

“Oh, come on,” Jessica prodded at him. “It’ll be fun.”

“Fun?” Clint eyed Steve over his sunglasses. “This is the girl you’re dating? The one who thinks going through old S.S.R. microfiche film is exciting? Come on, man, you’re such a disappointment.”

“Barton?” Jessica gave Clint her best, toothy grin.

“Hmmm?”

“Pick a box, sit down, do some reading, or I will _break your arm._ ” Jessica grabbed a box and started flipping through files.

“I’d sit down, if I were you, Hawkeye,” Sam said. He was already at a desk, peering at the dates on the folders inside his box.

***

Her office was trashed.

The door, which she’d _just_ had repaired again after putting a client through its window -- his own fucking fault -- hung on a single hinge and the frosted glass was shattered all over the floor. Her desk was upside down like roadkill, and her files had been shredded and scattered. Whatever they’d taken, she’d never figure it out.

Someone had started a fire in her trashcan, using the last of her whiskey and at least she’d been doing her drinking at the Tower recently and there wasn’t much left, or her whole apartment might have gone up in flames, which would have been bad. There were other people who lived in the building and that was guilt she didn’t need.

_Two hundred dollars a day, plus expenses._

She wasn’t even aware that she was going to hit something until Steve’s hand came down on her wrist, catching her at the last moment.

“Jess,” Steve said, his eyes serious. “Just don’t.”

“Get the fuck off me, Rogers,” Jessica snapped, twisting out of his grip.

Steve caught her again, hand over her mouth. “That’s fresh,” he said, jerking his chin at the gutted trashcan. She only barely resisted the urge to bite him and settled for licking his palm, which made him jerk back in reaction.

“You don’t have to protect me, Steve,” she said. “I can handle myself.”

“Was more thinking you didn’t want to warn them we’re here, but if they’re still here now, they’re stupid,” Steve said in disgust, wiping his hand on the back of her jacket. _Infant_ , she thought, conveniently ignoring the fact that she’d started it.

They spread out and searched the remains of her apartment; all her furniture was trashed, too. She stopped in her bedroom, head tipped to one side. She inhaled, slowly. Cologne.

Familiar cologne.

“Shit,” she said, looking around wildly. Luke wouldn’t have done this; he couldn’t possibly be _that_ angry with her.

“What?” Steve said, looking up from the tattered remains of her photo album.

“Luke’s been here,” Jessica said. “Recently.”

“You think your ex did this?”

She shook her head. “Luke’s got more chill than I do,” she said. “He might break in my door if he thought I was avoiding him, but he wouldn’t trash my stuff. This… this was something else.” Hard to tell the signs of a struggle among the wreckage. She traced the patterns on the floor, and then bent forward, inspecting a hole in the wall, narrow. Jessica pulled out a pocket knife and pried at the object wedged in the plaster.

She pulled out a crumpled wad of soft, almost rubbery plastic, flattened like a bullet that had struck hardened steel. Or Luke’s skin. Behind it, she dug out shattered bits of what looked like damp sugar-glass. She leaned closer and sniffed, and her vision fogged over, her head spinning.

Steve had his arms around her in an instant. “Jess! Jess!”

She let herself fall against his warm solidity, but it didn’t make the dizziness any better. “Dendrotoxin,” she managed to mumble. “Don’... touch.” And then everything went black.

***

“Carrying your girlfriend back into the Tower is becoming a thing, Cap,” Clint remarked.

“Yeah,” Steve said. Medical, this time, no matter how pissed Jess was going to be, because he had no idea what was wrong with her. These weren’t injuries, she’d just _touched_ the stuff. Why the hell had he assigned both Avenger scientists to the team in Michigan? He’d put a larger hole in Jess’s wall in order to obtain a sample; seemed easier just to break that chunk of wall out than risk touching the stuff himself. If it could put Jess out like a light, there was a good chance he was susceptible to it as well.

“JARVIS,” Steve said, pushing the door to medical open with his shoulder. No one was there, which wasn’t surprising; Dr. Cho only came in for emergencies. Most of the team had some experience with basic first aid. Steve put Jess down on one of the cots, sighing.

“Yes, Captain?”

“Can you get Tony on the line for me?”

“I’m afraid not, Captain. According to my last information from Mr. Stark, he and the team were more than a kilometer beneath the surface. I’m afraid there is too much interference to get a signal to him at this time.”

“What the hell?”

“I’m afraid he was not quite clear,” JARVIS said, sounding annoyed. “Something about Hydra and giant moles, but I am uncertain whether he was kidding.”

“Great,” Steve said. “Fantastic.”

***

“... you got it, Sk… erm yeah, number one?” A voice issued from Steve’s pocket, soft, with a rich burr, Scottish, or perhaps Irish. Steve didn’t quite have the ear to distinguish them easily. “Great, well, then… Excuse me, Captain Rogers, sir, excuse me, sir. Your phone, could you, erm? Yeah. I think it’s in his pocket, there’s not much light in there. Sir, can you hear me?”

“JARVIS,” Steve said, carefully, quietly. “Can you…”

“Of course, Captain.” JARVIS said, pulling up one of his holoscreens in medbay.

Steve reached carefully into his pocket, put his finger over the camera on the back, and then drew the phone out.

“Who is this?” Steve held the phone up. Somehow, someone had turned it on, while it was in his pocket. Had hacked his personal cell-phone. Steve was going to have some words with Tony about security.

“Uh. I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, but, uh…” The person on the phone had started a video chat, but they had the lights arranged so that their face was in shadow. Even so, Steve got the impression of youth, nervousness, and very short hair. “You can call me Turbo. Some of m’friends do, and um… well, I’m a friend.”

“Strange behavior for a friend, Turbo,” Steve said.

“Oh, tell security to knock tha’ off,” Turbo said. “We’re just gonna route around ‘im. It’s very important that we speak to you, Captain.”

“But not so important that you do it openly and honestly?” Steve asked, looking at the screen where JARVIS was projecting the phone trace that did, suddenly, bounce and scramble again. The display that JARVIS had suspended in midair turned a little red around the edges, as if the hacker was pissing off the AI.

The shadowy figure ducked its head, as if embarrassed. “Well, sir, you… er… We’re sort of in a little trouble here, and it may be your fault; unintentionally, of course, sir, I would never blame you, but… er… no’ everyone was the enemy, last spring.”

“You’re S.H.I. -”

“Shu’ up!” Turbo interrupted. “Sorry, that was rude, I’m sorry. Captain. Sir. But yes, and don’ say it. My friend that’s getting me to your phone is very good bu’ we don’t need additional complications.”

In the background, he heard a young woman’s voice, low and quick, but couldn’t make out her words.

“What is it you want?”

“Can… who was hit with the ICEr?”

“The what?” Steve asked.

“Who’ve you got that’s super passed out and’s been laying on a hospital bed for the last half day? We know someone did, you tripped over Sk-- er, our sniffer online.”

Steve stiffened. “How do you know about that?”

In the background, Steve caught a slender form walking behind his shadowy caller, female, with fluffy hair. “Excuse me, Captain Rogers,” she said, her accent British, more refined than the young man’s. He caught a glimpse of dark eyes and perfectly sculpted eyebrows. “I was wondering if I might get a look at your sleeper. I am a doctor, and helped with the original formula. The dendrotoxin was developed in my lab, and unfortunately, several of the weapons we developed as a non-lethal method of enhanced human containment protocol were removed from our custody during last year’s extreme change of leadership. Given what… our other friend discovered, we are, justifiably concerned that one of the Avengers has been… ICED.”

“Without further information, no,” Steve said. “How do I know I can trust you, especially when you’re…” He trailed off, watching JARVIS’s trace-map crumple into a clutter of golden projected dust.

“Well, to be quite frank, Captain,” the young woman said, “you’re the one who placed us in this precarious situation. We cannot have our location disclosed while the country is so turned against all previous agents. But if you find it reassuring, we were both hand-picked by Agent Coulson, for this team specifically. He always told us that we could trust you, if it became necessary.”

Steve swallowed, looked aside, then removed his finger from the camera. Coulson had been a good man, even if his obsession with Captain America had occasionally made Steve uneasy. “How did you know?”

“You did a web-search for dendrotoxin,” the young man said. “Some of tha’s out there on the web because of what Agent Romanov did, an’ we’ve been watching who accesses what information. It’s been quite handy, that.”

The map was back, glittering in the air, lines pale blue now instead of golden. Steve was sure that would mean something to Tony, but to Steve it was just oddly pretty.

“A friend touched some of it,” Steve admitted. “She’s been unconscious since this morning, despite having an enhanced metabolism.”

“Direct contact, or did someone shoot her?”

Steve frowned. “She found a bullet casing in the wall, touched some liquid and crystals inside.”

“All right, Captain, there,” and his phone buzzed in his hand. “I’ve sent the chemical formula for the antidote to your phone. The dispersal system in the ICER units --  Incapacitating Cartridge Emitting Railgun -- makes for a broad spectrum knock-out system, to better contain enhanced humans without harming them. Shut up… “ The woman looked off camera. “It’s not my fault he was at the top of the stairs at the time. Sorry, divisive commentary in the ranks, Captain. Anyway, a direct contact will last quite a bit longer, so that should wake her up. Otherwise, it will wear off, eventually, usually in a few days.”

Steve pondered that. JARVIS could probably walk him through setting up the antidote in lieu of having Tony or Bruce around. He hoped. “Will this stuff… affect me?” Because someone was out there using it and they obviously knew where Jess should have been, which was worrisome.

“Well, it took ou’ Deathlock quite handily,” the man said, and he sounded smug, a little proud. “So… yeah, probably. And the cartridges are designed to penetrate armor, too, so… use your shield?”

The woman cuffed her companion in the back of the head.

“Ow, Jemm… er… stop tha’!”

In the darkened room where the two were sitting, someone suddenly opened a door, spilling light on them from the other side of the room, and Steve got a clear view of two kids -- they couldn’t have been older than mid-twenties -- clean-cut and standing close enough together that they were either lovers or best friends; in a strange way, they reminded Steve of Tony and Bruce together in their lab. Both of them squeaked, almost in unison, eyes wide as they flicked their gaze between the screen where Steve was, and the person in the door.

“Sir, uh… we were jus’... um,” the young man said.

“Don’t care, Fitz,” a familiar voice said. Steve’s fingers clenched tighter around his phone. How the _hell--_ “I need the two of you in the conference room. Now.”

“Yes, Director,” the woman said, and without looking at the computer in front of her or meeting Steve’s gaze, she reached down and disconnected the call.

Steve shifted in his seat, uncomfortable. “Anything, JARVIS?”

JARVIS pulled up two employment files, stamped with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s logo. “Jemma Simmons and Leo Fitz, Captain. They were part of the Sci-Tech department, until just after the battle of New York, when they were assigned, along with various others, to a specialized strike team. After the Hydra uprising, they enacted an Odyssey Protocol and all traces of them have vanished. I was unable to positively identify the hacker, but their intrusion and scrambling methodology has fingerprints similar to those of a group called Rising Tide, who were eliminated some twenty months ago. I was unable to narrow the physical location of the source. I am sorry I cannot be of more service.” The AI sounded both annoyed and embarrassed.

“And… that last voice?” Steve asked, uncertain how to phrase it, not even sure if he wanted to know the truth, and if he did know the truth, what was he supposed to do about it.

JARVIS hesitated. “Without visual confirmation, Captain, I hesitate to form an opinion, but voice recognition provides a near-perfect match to Agent Coulson, currently on record as being deceased. I feel obligated to point out that vocal matching is relatively simple to achieve, though I cannot hazard a guess as to what they might hope to accomplish with such a thing.”

“Thank you, JARVIS,” Steve said. He didn’t want to think about that anymore, so pushed it from his mind. “Can you get me Dr. McCoy on the line? He might be able to make something of this formula. If there are more of these weapons out there, we need a line of defense.”

“I’ll put a call through to Professor Xavier’s school immediately, Captain.”

“Thank you.”

 

 


	10. Our Inability to Recognize

> “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”  
>  \-- Audre Lorde, Our Dead Behind Us: Poems

Jessica wasn’t certain if the headache was from the ramped up “night-night” gun, or from the antidote Steve had injected her with. Or maybe it was caffeine withdrawal. She bounced the injection kit in her hand; They’d managed to create a dozen of them, working with JARVIS and over a video-chat (Hank refused to leave the school for what he called kiddie science, as Xavier’s students were apparently in the middle of end-of-term exams). It worked a bit like an epinephrine kit: stick, push, wait ten seconds.

“Are we certain this is going to work?” Steve asked, leaning earnestly toward the display filled with McCoy’s face, big and blue and all fangs and fur, like a puppeteer’s nightmare. He’d be terrifying if it wasn’t for the wire-rimmed glasses perched on the end of his snout.

“It’s theoretically sound,” McCoy said reassuringly. “And your friend woke up promptly.”

“Don’t remind me,” Jessica said. “This shit sucks.”

Steve shrugged. “It could have been almost out of her system anyway.”

Jessica rolled her eyes. Steve was such a mother-hen.

“Hey, punk,” Barnes said, suddenly leaning into the lab’s doorway. “You coming up to eat? Your pizza’s here.”

Hmmm. “Ohh, pizza,” Jessica said. “I’m _starving_.” She moved toward the door.

“Hey, you’re awake,” Barnes said. “That’s great.”

“Yeah, you’re enhanced, right?” Jessica said. “Wanna give us a hand, here?” She put an arm up around Barnes’ shoulders; god _damn_ , super soldiers were stupidly tall. Technically, he did _start_ to nod before she touched the remaining sample of the dendrotoxin to his neck. He gasped, took two steps forward and fell over at her feet.

“Jess, what the _hell_?” Steve surged up from his chair.

“What, you don’t ask your friends for favors?” Jessica said, dropping into a squat to check Barnes’ pulse. Seemed fine, just asleep. And snoring. With his mouth open. Maybe Stark’s life wasn’t as easy as she thought, if he had to sleep through _that_ on a regular basis.

“I don’t knock my friends out without warning,” Steve said, sighing. “What is wrong with you?”

“I have impulse-control issues.”

“ _Obviously_.” Steve could not have packed much more disapproval into that word and Jessica winced a little, inwardly. She wondered, sometimes, if her lack of control was the physical equivalent of foot-in-mouth syndrome. Ah well, forgiveness was easier to get than permission.

“Look, he’s not field-ready,” Jessica said. “So if the kit doesn’t work and he’s out for a few days, it won’t hurt anything. Gimme a hand rolling him over, he’s heavy. Jesus, what are you super-soldiers made of? Rocks?”

“You are a terrible person,” Steve said, glaring at her.

“And you love me. You said so, can’t get out of it now. Oooof,” she said, finally getting Barnes rolled over onto his back. “You think I’m gonna need a running start?”

“Yes.” Steve took the antidote from her and jammed the kit into Barnes’ thigh without offering to give her that lead, which she supposed she deserved. Barnes came out of it all at once and already swinging. He wasn’t entirely incoherent, because while he _did_ hit her, he did it with his right hand. It knocked her back over the med-cot but didn’t break anything important. And he stopped as soon as Steve got a hand on his shoulder.

Steve looked at her pointedly, but she was occupied with trying to get out of the remains of the cot.

“You just had to find the one girl in the city who could annoy me more than Peggy Carter, didn’t you, Steve?” Barnes shoved his hands through his hair and stomped off, leaving Steve standing there with his mouth open in protest.

“Dammit, Jess, you could’ve at least apologized!” Steve growled.

“I suck at apologies, Steve,” she said, finally getting her feet under her.

“Yeah, well,” Steve snapped, “get better.”

And he ran off after his best friend, leaving her with a headache, a sinking feeling, and the inevitable knowledge of how much of an asshole she was. Shit. Shit. _Shit_.

***

_Knowing it's real means you gotta make a decision. One, keep denying it. Or two... do something about it._

Jessica stared at the bottle of top-shelf she’d stolen from Stark’s expansive -- and expensive -- liquor cabinet. She hadn’t opened it. It was right there in front of her, beautiful and perfect. It promised forgetfulness, if not an ease to her pain.

She just stared at it.

_This_ was why she pushed people away: she broke everything she touched. She’d had so few good things in her life that she didn’t know what to do with them when she got them. When she’d been a normal human, before the accident, she’d had no idea what sort of pain she was in for, and she’d taken for granted her stupid, normal life. Parents who were always just a little disappointed with her laziness and lack of motivation. A pain in the ass brother that she loved to distraction. She hadn’t even thought about losing them, then. It had never occurred to her that she _could_ lose them, except in the vague, existential “we all die sometime” sort of way. And then they were gone.

Trish. Trish was a good thing in her life, and despite being the occasional monster to her, there wasn’t anything Jessica had ever done that had managed to piss Trish off enough to make her leave.

The whiskey glowed a deep, rich gold in the sun coming through the window.

She’d thought she had a good thing with Luke, but they just never stopped fighting. It was still his fault this time, and maybe it was terrible of her, but she couldn’t stop _keeping score_ with him. Neither of them ever said they were sorry. Instead, they heaped accusations on themselves: he said he was an idiot, or she called herself a piece of shit. What she meant was _sorry_ , and maybe it’s what he meant, too, but they never said it. And they never forgave each other, either. “No, you’re not, don’t say that about yourself.” But that wasn’t “It’s okay,” or “everyone fucks up sometimes, you’re all right.” They kept right on not saying those things until he walked away, or she did.

It was the aching loneliness drove them back together, time after time, having to live among the normals, the plain-vanilla humans who hated and feared them. There were so few others, so few who could understand. When there was only one other person like you in the whole world, that narrowed down your choices. You took what you were given, and tried to be grateful for it, or you reconciled yourself to being alone. Jessica had never been good at being alone, not for very long.

She wasn’t naive enough to be hoping for a happily-ever-after, she just wanted a little fucking peace of mind.

_The real world is not about happy endings. It's about taking the life you have, and fighting like hell to keep it._ Jeri had said that to her, once, and maybe, just now, Jessica was beginning to understand what that meant.

She cracked the seal on the whiskey; the rich smell flooded the small room. She could walk away. She could. She’d done it a hundred times before, just shoved everyone out of the way and walked off. Some few stubborn bastards had stuck around: Trish. Jeri. Malcolm. People she didn’t deserve, who’d never done anything terrible enough to be punished with the burden of her and her toxic touch.

Pushing them away so that she couldn’t be hurt… That, right there, that was the problem. She was already hurting, and not because Barnes had punched her in the chin. Frankly, that pain had faded moments after it happened. She’d deserved that.

And maybe he hadn’t deserved what she’d done. No, there was no “maybe” about it; she’d gotten a little of the history there, and it was horrific. So bad that it made Kilgrave look like the punchline to a terrible joke. So bad that she’d pushed it away with both hands, not wanting to think about how much pain he’d suffered. Or how much it hurt Steve to think about.

Shit.

She poured the whiskey into a glass and inhaled, feeling the fumes sear their way down the back of her throat and settle like honey in her lungs.

_All in,_ _Jones_ , she thought, _or all out. Time to make a decision._

***

“JARVIS,” Barnes complained, getting to his feet and shoving off the blankets, “it’s not much of a bolt-hole if you keep tellin’ people where I am.”

“I apologize, Mr. Barnes,” the AI said. “It’s part of Mr. Stark’s new Communication Improvement Initiative.”

“File a complaint with my nosy, over-achieving boyfriend that privacy is still a thing,” Barnes muttered. He shoved a hand through his tangle of dark hair, looking less like a pissed off assassin and more like a wet kitten than anyone should. He was wearing black sweats and when he turned toward the already-open door, Jessica saw he was wearing a tee with a unicorn on the front that said “I will STAB you.”

“Of course, Mr. Barnes,” JARVIS said.

“What do you want?” Barnes pulled his hair back and secured it with the elastic he wore on his wrist.

“I’m an asshole,” Jessica said.

“So happens I noticed that,” Barnes said. He threw himself back down on the sofa, but didn’t invite her to sit. She hovered awkwardly in the door.

“Sorry,” she said. It was harder to say than it probably should have been. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“No, you should not have,” Barnes continued to agree with her, his tone frosty. “Do you even know why?”

“Huh?”

“Do you know why I’m angry? Do you know what you’re actually apologizing for?”

Ug, this, this right here was why she didn’t apologize. “Because I’m a piece of shit?” Jessica threw her hands up. This was one of the reasons she was so bad at this… people thing.

“Don’t do that,” Barnes said. “Your apology shouldn’t be about me having to reassure you that you’re a decent human being who made some mistakes. I ain’t your goddamn cheerleader, sister. You actually want to apologize, then you should be talking about what _you_ did to _me_.” His voice was low, hostile, each word distinct and full of malice.

Was he some kind of preschool teacher or something in a past life? She hadn’t even really hurt him. “I knocked you out. Steve brought you right back, two minutes, tops. I’m sorry.” It was getting harder to make it sound sincere. Why couldn’t he just accept the apology, already?

Instead, he just stared at her for a long minute. Finally, he said, “‘Bout a month ago, I went through surgery without any anesthetic. Because I hate going under that much. I made Steve _hold me down_ and let a doctor cut up under my rib cage with a scalpel because I hate being helpless more than I hate _anything else in the world_ , even torture levels of pain. And you just… what? Knock me out to prove a point? I’ve spent the last seventy years stuck in cryosleep, dreaming about--” He choked and silenced himself, and there were shadows in his eyes that Jessica absolutely did not want to recognize before he turned away and scrubbed at his face with his hand. “And you did that to me. You did it right in front of _Steve_. He still hates himself for doing it, and you just made my pain -- and his -- _worthless_.”

God, she hated crying. She slapped the tears off her cheeks, brutal but silent, not looking away, not saying a god damn word, because really, what could she say?

Barnes just looked back at her, like he had all the time in the world, and who knows, maybe he did. He didn’t look like he was in a forgiving sort of mood, either, and who the hell could blame him? _Jesus Christ, I really am the worst person ever._

She almost said it aloud, but stopped. He wouldn’t appreciate it any more for its sincerity. About _him_ , she reminded herself, and took the deepest breath her shaky lungs would hold. “Are you all right? Is there anything I can do, to make it better?”

“Two things,” Barnes said. “One; leave me alone for a while. Two; never, ever tell Tony about this. _Ever_.”

“Yeah,” Jessica said slowly, because it didn’t take any kind of people skills at all to know that even if Barnes eventually forgave her, Stark never would. “I… yeah, that would not be a good idea. Thank you. I’m sorry. God. Sorry.”

Barnes nodded, pulling his legs up onto the sofa, and ignored her until she left.

***

The snow had melted to slush and walking the streets was unpleasant, full of cold wind and wet boots, but Steve had gone for a walk -- and by walk, JARVIS apparently meant aggressive barreling through the streets, just aching for someone to start a fight -- and Jessica was tired and soaked to the knee with filthy icewater by the time she finally found him.

It might have been better, smarter, to wait until he’d worn himself out, but Jessica knew herself. If she waited, if she wasn’t actively working to fix the problem, she’d talk herself out of even trying. All in, or all out.

She made one of those half-bounding, not-quite-flights and landed in front of him. “Hey, cowboy,” she said. When he didn’t meet her eyes, she realized with more resignation than surprise that he was going to try to plow past her. She set her feet and grabbed his arm when he tried to brush past.

She wasn’t quite as strong as he was, but she was fast, and she was planted, and despite how angry he was -- she could feel the anger broiling off him like an open stove -- he still wasn’t willing to hurt her. He dragged her a few steps, then slowed and stopped.

He glared at her, and there was a hurricane in her heart. It ripped and roared and screamed through her, breaking the levees, flooding her carefully prepared arguments. This man was going to wreck her. “What do you want?” he demanded.

“I got nothin’ for you,” she said, broken. “No excuses, no… You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Steve.”

Steve wrenched his arm out of her grip. “It’s not me you need to apologize to,” he grated, teeth clenched and jaw squared.

“I did that,” she said, and there went the damn tears again. She stared at the slush on the sidewalk, the dirty, sooty clumps of road-scrape left over in piles against the sidewalk. “We talked. It… I’m sorry, Steve. I didn’t mean… I didn’t want to hurt you. Didn’t want to hurt Barnes. I… just wanted you to know it. How sorry I am. Don’t expect you to forgive it.” She didn’t look up at him, didn’t know what would hurt more: seeing him steel himself to thrust her aside, or seeing those blue eyes soften. His forgiveness was both utterly necessary and glass shards against her heart.

Her stones were cast. She risked one quick flicker, but he wasn’t looking at her, his face in profile, and she took a long moment to memorize everything about him. That jaw and mouth, those eyes, his shoulders and chest. And those were only the parts of him that everyone could see; she’d had something more for a while there. Steve Rogers had honesty and integrity and an admittedly short fuse. He was earnest and almost painfully open and quick to jump to someone’s defense. Remarkably close-mouthed about his feelings, but in the dark, he’d said he loved her. He had high expectations, and while she was certain she’d never live up to them, something about him made her want to try, anyway.

She sighed, quiet and watched the heat of her breath dissipate into the air. There wasn’t anything else to say, so she turned back the way she came. It wasn’t that far to her office and she should probably start cleaning up that mess anyway. It would give her something to do while she tried to forget about the mess she’d made of her life.

“Will you _not_ do that?” Steve said, catching her hand. His fingers were warm and she was almost crying again, trying not to drag his hand up to cradle it against her chest. “You don’t… Jess, I’m pissed, you don’t have to _leave me_ over it.”

“I didn’t think you’d want me to stay,” Jessica admitted, hating how tiny and pathetic her voice sounded.

“Do people not get mad at you?” Steve asked, eyebrow going up. “Because really, I find that hard to believe.”

“Yes, Steve,” Jessica said. “They do. And then they leave.”

“Well, that’s not how I work,” Steve said. “That’s not how any of this works.”

Jessica threw her hands up, trying to encompass “what the fuck do you call this shit then” with a gesture.

“I needed to calm down,” Steve said. “I was coming back. I don’t abandon my friends. And I’m certainly not going to abandon _you_.”

“You should,” Jessica said. “I’m no good for you, cowboy, I’m a piece of shit, I’m-- ” And she was making it all about herself again, God, she was selfish and terrible and-- and there she went _again_ , dammit.

“You and Tony, oh my God,” Steve said. “I could do without the drama, sugar. But if the only way to dump it is to lose you, then I’ll deal with the drama. Don’t expect me not to complain about it, though. Because, _really_.”

“Why?”

Steve pulled her into an embrace and she was weak enough to let him, let him wrap those arms around her. They ignored everyone on the street who was staring, or worse, just passing by, pretending nothing existed but their own problems and motivations.

“If you don’t know the answer to that, Jess,” Steve said, “then you haven’t been paying attention.”

“You play your cards a little close, cowboy,” Jessica said. “You want me to say it first?”

Steve huffed. “I already said it once, you little coward. You even told me I couldn’t take it back, and I’m not.” He ran his thumb over her knuckles. “Is it just me? If it’s not that, for you, if it’s just a… a sex thing, or a… friends with benefits thing, or… Is this -- _us_ \-- not worth it to you, to fight for it?”

Jessica stared up at him, into those vivid forget-me-not eyes, and she fell, like a concrete angel. “Steve.” She didn’t know how to say it, she’d _never_ said it, not to anyone, not really. She didn’t know what to do; she wore her cynicism like a tattoo over her heart and he was so good and pure and she’d never done anything to deserve him. But she didn’t want anything more than to fall asleep next to him and wake up to the sound of his voice and… _dammit_ , it was hard, putting herself out there, giving her heart to him to break. She didn’t like using words like _forever_ , but she could love him for today. And then, tomorrow, she’d probably fall all over again. Christ. “I… I love you.”

He slumped against her and Jessica was shocked to realize that he’d been waiting for her to say it, that he’d been just as terrified that she _wouldn’t_ as she’d been of saying it in the first place. And then he was kissing her, kissing her in the street in front of God and anyone, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. She went hot and liquid in her stomach -- make-up sex was always the best -- and her fingers were in his hair. “Thank God,” he said, against her ear, “oh, Jess, I…”

“You’re what gets me through the night, cowboy,” she said.

 

 


	11. The Wounds Remain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the smut-avoidant, the first section is sex. The second section is pillow-talk and silliness, intimate but not erotic. If that's more your cup of tea, you can use this link to jump there.

> “It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”  
>  \-- Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

“Don’t,” Steve said, pressing her up against the door of his suite as soon as they’d closed it behind them and kissing her breathless, “don’t ever do that again.”

“What? Don’t fuck up? Steve, you know that’s not going to happen,” Jessica said and she took a deep breath and god, it was a good thing she did because he came down on her mouth again and kissed her like he planned to do so for the next dozen years or so.

Abruptly, he pulled back, cupped the side of her face in one of his huge hands, and looked at her, intently. She squirmed a bit because he was so gorgeous and she was, frankly, a little bit ordinary and sloppy. “What?”

“I just… want to look at you,” Steve said. “You keep scarin’ the hell out of me, Jess, and that… that’s how I know it’s real. I could _lose_ you. I was never any good at letting go, even when I wanted to. And I _don’t_ want to, so please don’t… don’t act like walking out of my life will solve anything, because it won’t. Not for me. You gotta give us a chance. Maybe it’s me, maybe I haven’t done enough to make you feel safe and--”

“Shut up,” Jessica said and she kissed him again, soft and easy, her mouth moving on his. “You do plenty, I just don’t know what to do with it.”

He pressed against her, hard and insistent against her belly. “I know what you can do with it,” Steve suggested, that blush climbing up his cheeks. One day, she promised herself, she’d get him to actually talk dirty to her in bed and that would be a riot.

“Yeah? You gonna let me make it up to you, then?” Jessica got a hand under his shirt and pushed it up, baring his stomach. She traced her fingers around the waistband of his khakis, feeling his skin under her fingertips, listening to the suck of air he made.

“No,” Steve said. “You don’t… It’s not an obligation, Jess, not something to _owe_ , no matter what. I want you because I want you, because I… “

“You hush your mouth, Steve Rogers,” Jessica scolded him. “Don’t you dare cheat me of make up sex.”

Some of the tension in him released, though the way he was pressing against her, she could feel it had just changed focus. “All right, I got it,” Steve said against her mouth, chuckling even as his arms tightened around her with uncompromising strength. She opened her mouth, welcoming his invasion, moaning her pleasure as his tongue swept inside, tasting her, exploring, mapping the territory of her mouth with easy practice. His hand reached down, slid along her ass and pulled her to him, pressing her against his heat and hardness. “I want to be inside you,” he whispered against her ear.

Her legs gave out. _Jesus_ , that was...

Steve caught her and lifted, but didn’t, apparently, feel like taking her very far; he spread her out on the table in his kitchenette. He used the table mostly for letters and paperwork and Jessica pushed out, shoving the neatly-stacked pages and envelopes to the floor, and he didn’t even protest. She wanted his skin on her, his heat. She unbuttoned her pants and Steve pulled off her wet boots, tossing them aside, then yanked her jeans off and he was on her again, the stiff khakis rubbing against her thighs, chaffing and driving her wild.

He got a hand under her shirt and pushed awkwardly at her bra until it was digging uncomfortably into her back. She hissed and Steve snarled and the fabric tore, the hook dragging a scrape over her skin, and she didn’t care because his hands -- which were cold enough to shock her nipples into peaks instantly -- were on her and she couldn’t have complained even if she’d wanted to, through the cries of want she made.

“My man’s got no patience,” she observed, trying to be flip and sarcastic, but it took a u-turn straight into breathlessly aroused. His eyes went wide at that, the pupils blown and his mouth shaking just a little. _My man._ Oh, god, she was turning into such a sap, next thing you knew she was going to be crying over Hallmark cards and… He dropped a line of hot kisses across her stomach and you know what, if he was going to do that, she could cry over a Hallmark card, no problem.

His hand wandered up her leg, starting at her ankle, pressure through her knee-high striped socks, then tickling over her bare knee and up her thigh, then down again, the contrast of sensation swirling heat deep in her, and she gave into it, lolled back in his arms like a doll, let him touch and tease and draw sensation from her skin with his fingers, drunk on it, wallowing in it.

His fingers brushed over the thin fabric of her underwear and her inner muscles tightened on nothing. She felt empty without him, wanted him so damn bad. She spread her legs apart further, letting him settle against her, wanting, _needing_. He was so slow, taking his time just when she didn’t want him to, making her desperate, crazy with desire. She was on fire for him, burning, and he was cool, in control, mastering her, making her insane.

She grabbed at his shirt and jerked herself upward. The table shifted under them and if it had been a normal table from Ikea instead of something specially reinforced for super-soldier use, it would have shattered under their combined weight, but it didn’t. It just creaked a little, and as soon as Jessica knew she wasn’t about to crash to the floor, she got her hands on his khakis, unzipped him and pushed them down around his knees, seeking. She couldn’t help a sly, feminine smirk as he cried out. Her fingers wrapped around his length and she bent forward to take him into her mouth. He was huge, god, _huge_ and heavy in her mouth, so hot, and her jaw already felt strained, but he moaned so pretty and eager that she didn’t want to stop either.

She shifted, trying to get a better angle, and his hands were in her hair, and -- _smash!_ \-- there went the sugar bowl. She got her hand wrapped around his base, controlling his depth, and took him in as far as she could. Steve was panting for air, so sweet. She glanced up and he was watching her, watching the stretch of her mouth around him, watching her take his cock, and he was wide-eyed with wonder, so lovely and masculine and utterly wrecked. She felt a surge of triumph in her power over him, knowing how bad he wanted her, just as much as she wanted him. She tongued at his slit, tasting the salt of him and he groaned again, leaking and she licked it away as fast as it formed.

“Jess, oh, god,” Steve said, and that was a first, he’d never called her name before, just _sugar_. She wasn’t sure that it was significant, except that she’d noticed, so of course it was, even if she didn’t know why. Didn’t matter at the moment, she decided, and twisted her mouth on him, licking and sucking and… There, there he went. She was swallowing as fast as she could, but damn, there was so much and it just spilled over, down her chin and throat to drip onto the floor. Steve uttered a strangled moan and touched her face, tracing the messy lines. He looked _destroyed_.

Jessica pulled back off him and grinned, wiping her chin with the back of her hand. She stretched her jaw and scrubbed at her teeth with her tongue. “Like that, did you?”

He nodded, blushing furiously.

Jessica hopped down from the table, over the shattered remained of the sugar bowl. “Come on,” she said, stripping off the rest of her clothes and leaving them behind. She tossed a challenging look over her shoulder, smiling when she saw how Steve was watching her. She was never going to get used to that, the way he looked at her as if she was a gift. He stared for a bit, then stripped the rest of the way out of his own clothes, little bit awkward because all the lights were on and it was still daytime and Steve was so old-fashioned sometimes. “Move it, cowboy. You have a bed and I’m not sure why we don’t use it more.”

Steve flushed, glorious and red, from his cheeks down to his chest. “Um… because, you do stuff like that.” And he pointed back to the kitchen.

“You were an active participant,” Jessica said, fluttering her eyelashes at him, laughing.

“I’ll give you _active participant_ ,” Steve said, mock-menacing. He caught her, scooped her up, and carried her into the bedroom. Jessica squeaked and laughed, scrambling away from him on the bed. She grabbed a pillow and threw it at him, laughing again when he caught it and tossed it aside. “Pretty certain it’s not a pillow fight you wanted, is it?”

“It’s not an either-or sitch, here,” Jessica said. She pulled her knees up and grinned at him. “I dunno, just… happy. It’s weird. I don’t do happy, most of the time.”

“You should,” he said, his own grin softening. “It’s a good look on you.”

Jessica lowered her eyes for a moment, fingers locked around her knees, then she let go, lay back against the comforter. “You know what else is a good look on me?”

Steve loomed over her. “I hope like hell you’re gonna say it’s me.”

“Gotta admit, you are pretty hot,” she said, tracing one finger up his chest, along his neck, to his mouth. “You haven’t changed that much, you know that? Your forties girl had a picture of you, from before you got all serumed up. Same jaw, same mouth, same damn determined look on your face.”

“Peggy was ‘bout the only one who ever liked me before the serum,” Steve said wistfully. “Her an’ Bucky. But they tell me, the serum -- the one I got, anyhow -- just intensifies whatever you’ve already got. So I’m still pretty much the same guy, at least on the inside. Still stubborn, still hot-tempered, still too ready to jump in a fight.” He smiled a little crookedly.

“Still too sexy for your shirt,” Jessica said, smirking.

Steve huffed a laugh. “That, that bit is a little newer.”

She ran her hand down, along his chest, found the fullness of his cock again. “What about this bit? This an upgrade, too?”

Steve shuddered at the touch and pressed into her hand, seeking pressure and friction. “Guess so. It grew with the rest of me, but th’ proportion’s more or less the same. On the other hand, I don’t get hit with an asthma attack half the time I’m about to finish, anymore. That’s definitely an upgrade, let me tell you.”

“Yeah, you won the lottery on upgraded physicals,” Jessica said, stroking him easily, her voice working hard to stay at casual conversational. “For me, nadda. Get run over by a chem truck, wake up, still the same flat-chested, too skinny, bad hair-cut and terrible attitude--”

“Hey, now,” Steve interrupted, “that’s Captain America’s girlfriend you’re bad-mouthing.”

Jessica opened her mouth, then shut it again. What was she going to do, try to convince Captain America that she wasn’t a catch, wasn’t… No, no, that wasn’t going anywhere. There was no profit in that. If he wanted to think she was... Well, she wasn’t sure what he thought, exactly. “Huh,” she said, finally, curling her fingers around him. “Captain America’s girlfriend. That’s… a hell of a thing to live up to. If it’s okay with you, though, think I’d rather be Steve’s girl.”

He smiled wider at that, genuinely pleased. “Sounds just right to me, su-- Jess.” He kissed her, hot and sweet and needy.

She wrapped her arms around him, drew him down over her like a blanket, snuggling into that heat, and maybe, just a little, wriggling more than she needed to, liking the feel of him over her, solid and warm and heavy. Her hands went into his hair, feeling the short buzz crop along the back of his neck, tickling her palms. “You… I don’t know how you did it, but… nobody else ever came into my life and made anything but a disaster of it.”

He grunted a little at her wriggling, eyelids drooping briefly as he drew a quick breath, then nuzzled his way along her jaw to nip under her ear. “Right time, right place, I guess,” he rumbled, the vibration of his voice so close to her ear sending shivers down her spine. “For both of us.”

Jessica groaned, shifted, her hand still on him, then settled him between her legs, moving her hand to rub him against her entrance. She was hot, twitchy, against him, need flaring up. “Steve… God, Steve…”

“Jess...” He rocked forward, pushing into her, a pressure that both eased and inflamed.

Jessica arched up, maybe a little too hard, her strength (and maybe, accidentally, a little bit of flight there; wow, she hadn’t tried that before) bucked both of them off the mattress for a second before they thumped back into it, but oh, wow, oh, that was… interesting. When he landed on her, it drove him deeper, harder than ever, and so perfect. She gasped, clamped down on him with her muscles.

“Oh my _god_ ,” he said, apparently just as taken with that trick as she was. “Do that again.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jessica said. “If I go all Ghostbusters on us here and stick us to the ceiling, I’m gonna tell everyone it’s totally your fault.” She thrust backward, using the, well, she wasn’t really sure what they were. Flight muscles, except that she didn’t actually have wings. But it always felt a little like she was flexing… a certain tightness in her back and shoulders, a bit of thrust to get her moving. “Bounce me, I need some momentum.”

He tucked his face into her neck and laughed. “You asked for it,” he warned, chortling, and thrust into her, hard.

She rocked her hips against the mattress, then pushed up and… oops, that might have been a little too hard, because she got them about a foot or so off the bed, and then they started drifting, like someone had just turned gravity off or something. “Um… okay, this is new…” and she started laughing, which did very interesting things to the parts of them that were joined together. She wrapped her legs around his hips, but there was nothing to push against for another thrust.

Steve squirmed around, trying for another push, but it didn’t really accomplish anything. “This,” he laughed, “may not have been as good an idea as it seemed.”

“Flying,” she said. “Not my strong point.” She checked under them. “This, erm… we’re gonna hit the floor, I think. Hang on.” She reached down, behind them, caught the dresser with one hand and rotated them around until Steve was underneath, then let go, just a bit. They dropped three feet in a hurry, stopped with a jolt, then tumbled the rest of the way to the floor. She coughed out a breath. “It’s really more like hyperactive levitation. You okay?”

He was still laughing, so he couldn’t be too hurt. “Fine. You?”

She shifted forward; they were still joined together, so, that shut him up pretty fast, with a guttural groan. “My abilities did not come with an instruction manual,” she said, grinding down on him.

He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her even closer. “If it makes you feel better, you can ask Bucky about me learning to throw the shield,” he offered.

Jessica straightened a little, rocked against him. “You okay down there, or are you gonna get carpet burn?”

He wiggled a little, testing the carpet (and, she suspected, teasing her), then laid back, his hands firm on her hips. “It’ll heal.”

“Hold on, then,” she said, and shimmied down, then rocked, hard, riding him, pulling herself almost all the way off, then slid down, slow, slow… and up again. She planted her hands on his chest, holding him in place as much as she could, wishing that she could do more, putting all of that strength she’d acquired to good use.

His hands tightened on her hips and he threw his head back as he arched his back to meet her. “Jess, _Jess..._ ”

She arched back, hands coming up to cup her own breasts, cupping them with her fingers, pushing them up, groaning with need, so hot, almost molten. She lost the rhythm for a moment, stuttering, then caught it again, slow, slow, then faster, then slow, until she was whining in the back of her throat, using him for her own pleasure.   

Groaning with every breath, he curled upward (Jesus, those _abs_ ) and closed his mouth over one nipple, teeth scraping just on the edge of pain, tongue following behind to soothe the raw ache.

She cried out, arched into it, and something shifted between them to just the right angle. She twisted her hips, rubbing herself on him, and yeah, that was… right there… she clasped her arms around his head, holding herself in place, and then-- “God… you… uh… right there… harder, _Steve_!” Her voice spiraled up as she went, tipping over the edge and her knee scraped the carpet, a sharp sting that drove her even higher, pain to pleasure and she shuddered against him, her whole body shaking.

His grip tightened even more, bruisingly tight, and as her rhythm faltered, he picked her up and slammed her back down, driving into her as he gasped and moaned and finally came, each spasm of his cock inside her distinct against her sensitized flesh.

Jessica collapsed on top of him, panting hard. “Oh, you beautiful wrecking ball,” she said. “You… uh… I have no words. I cannot do the words. You…”

He flopped back down onto his back, breathing just as hard. “Uh-huh,” he managed, which she figured meant he couldn’t quite do words, either. He brushed her hair back out of her face, a bit sloppily, since he wasn’t looking, but she couldn’t complain, because it was more effort than she wanted to put out at the moment.

She nuzzled at him a moment, then rolled over and off, the cool air soothing against her skin. “One of these days, cowboy, the _bed_. It’s gonna happen.”

“Any day now,” he agreed gamely.

*** 

“Not that I’m complaining,” Jessica said, eyeing Steve sidelong, “but what happened to ‘sugar?’”

Steve blushed, bright and fierce and sudden. “Didn’t, uh. It’s.” He stopped himself before he could launch into full embarrassed babble, and took a breath. “The, uh, ladies who taught me, they reckoned ‘sugar’ was good enough for a girl you weren’t going to, um, go steady with. But since we figured we’d, y’know, hang on, well, I figured it’d be better to use your name.”

“You really lose that Captain America voice when you get flustered,” she said, rolling over and kicking her feet in the air to cross her ankles.

“Well, you said you’d rather be Steve’s girl anyway,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I _would_ ,” she agreed. “Captain America’s a bit of a fucking boy scout -- yeah, yeah, I know. But you have this rep and it’s a hell of a lot bigger than I am. So… ladies, plural? That sounds like a fun story. You told me once that you could shock me.”

“Oh, that, well.” So much for hoping the blush would fade anytime soon. “There was kind of a... Captain America was a PR stunt, you know? Even before they actually let me go fight anything. So by the time I actually made it to the European theater, I already had a bit of a name. And once the Commandos were formed, they just... Well, wartime news, you know? They’d talk up any old thing that kept up morale. So pretty much anywhere we went, someone had heard of us. Me.” He glanced at Jess, rubbing his neck, but she was just watching him with bright, expectant eyes. “Anyway, we got a week’s leave in France, once, after this really screwy mission. Bucky was usually the one who kept ‘em off me -- the fans--”

“Oh, I’m sure that was a burden for him… taking your girls off your hands,” Jessica snorted.

Steve grinned. “Well, maybe, but he was a real trooper about it. Anyway, this time he had a girl already, was kinda serious and everything, so when I went down to the bar...” He shrugged, getting more embarrassed by the second. “These four gals started chattin’ me up, and I never was any good at sayin’ no. Never had any practice, I guess -- pretty good at hearing it, though.”

“ _Four_?” Her eyebrows went all the way up. “Wow…”

Steve’s hands twisted together of their own accord. “Sort of. I mean. Not exactly all at once, more like... taking turns? French girls, you know... Guess they decided I needed teaching, and set about seeing to my education.”

Jessica rested her chin in her hands, grinning. “If they were still alive, I’d send ‘em a fruit basket. You are… very well educated, my love.”

Steve laughed, a little self-consciously. “They were... thorough,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t know if they were still around. No way to look; I only ever got their first names anyway, and it’s just as well, ‘cause I mixed _those_ up.”

“Thus… sugar,” Jessica guessed.

Steve nodded. “Thus ‘sugar’. They said I needed a sweet name like that so I wouldn’t have to remember every girl’s own name, and ‘sugar’ is what my... my first, what she called me, so.”

“Well, you can call me whatever you want… I call you cowboy because you rode in like John fucking Wayne, that first night...  crazy bastard.”

Steve grinned, a little of his blush fading -- not embarrassed at all about that. “I like it,” he said. “Still don’t think I should call you ‘sugar’, though. Especially since I’ve told you where it comes from. Wouldn’t want you thinking I was confused about who I’m with.”

“Soooo, you’ll have to come up with something else.”

“Like, hmm...” Steve tipped his head to the side, considering. “Baby?” He made a face. “Nope, that’s out. I don’t know how Bucky makes it sound so sweet; when I say it, it just sounds kind of creepy. Honey?”

Jessica stuck her tongue out, one eye crinkling up. “No.”

“Darling? Sweetheart?”

She shuddered. “ _Not_ darling. Ever. Kilgrave called me that.”

Steve frowned slightly, opened his mouth, then looked at her face and closed his mouth again with a nod. “Not that, then. I’m running short on ideas.”

Jessica scratched her chin. “Princess? Heh… no, maybe not.”

Steve’s lip twitched. “Sweetcheeks.”

“What are you, Tony Stark? No. definitely not.”

Steve cracked up. “Yeah, I’m kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel, here.”

“How about we just stick with ‘Jess’?” she said. “It’s not _that_ hard to remember. And I don’t let anyone else shorten my name, so it’s still a little special.”

“All right,” Steve agreed. “And you can stick with cowboy. Or even just Steve.” He grinned at her.

“I like Steve. It’s a nice name.” She snickered. “And one of these days, I have to show you that movie, because I feel weirdly old making a joke you don’t get.”

He mock-groaned. “Yet another movie,” he sighed.

“So, so abused. Truly, I feel sorry for you.”

“You should,” he said solemnly. “Don’t suppose you’re feeling sorry enough that we could get up off the floor anytime soon?”

“Oh, God yes. I have imprints of your carpet on my ass, I swear.”

“This, I have to see.” Before she could react, he scooped her up and tossed her onto the bed, rolling her over to poke at her bottom.

Jessica laughed, squirming. “Okay, okay,” she said. “Captain America may be a boy scout, but Steve Rogers is a _pervert_.”

He laughed and planted a sloppy kiss right on her left ass cheek. “I prefer to think of it as being dedicated to my continuing education.”

 

 


	12. Hard to Handle

> “I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”  
>  \-- Marilyn Monroe

Steve and Jessica were arguing again. Bucky was going to enjoy that, because the rest of the day was going to be fucking boring as shit. Tony and the other Michigan spelunkers had managed to get a message out yesterday, saying they were fine.

Well, no, that’s not what the message said, because it was Tony and Tony couldn’t make anything simple. The recording had been delivered via a tiny robotic earthmover that had speed-tunneled up through the ground in Dearborn and started broadcasting to the nearest SI tower. Tony’s voice had come across JARVIS’s speakers unexpectedly at four-thirty in the morning. “Tell Mom to keep his star-spangled socks on, we’re fine. If by fine, you mean more than a mile below the surface of the planet where it is cold and dark and I’m pretty sure I just got molested by an underground land-squid. When bad guys go to ground, they usually don’t mean it quite this literally, and if I find this mole-dude, I’m totally going to stuff him in the tallest tower on the planet. Love you, Buckybear, and you better not eat my ice cream, because I will be very put out. Yeah, yeah, Nat, I’m sending it, I’m sending it. Just because you have your snugglebunny with you… _ow_.”

Anyway, the crew in Michigan was fine but probably not going to be in touch anytime soon.

Sam was doing one of his appearances for vets with PTSD down in DC, and he’d taken the other quinjet. Sif and one of the Warriors Three (did that make him the Warrior One?) had shown up last night and requested -- in over-enunciated and formal words -- Clint’s presence for dinner as Darcy’s date. “Companion” had been the word actually used, and the whole thing sounded more like a demand than a request, but Clint hadn’t seemed to mind. Darcy was working on an advanced degree in cross-dimensional cultural study and had actually been invited to dine with Odin -- well, to a general feast where Odin was going to be in attendance, anyway. Why she wanted Clint as her date was… not entirely clear and quite possibly the precursor to an inter-dimensional incident. But Clint was out for the day -- and possibly as long as the next week, because Asgardians did not fuck around when it came to feasts.

And Steve had a ribbon-cutting thing. The Avengers needed a bit of positive PR and this was just up the street. Very low key and dull.

So, for most of the day, it was just going to be Bucky and Jess in the Tower. Heaven defend him. But right now, watching Jessica and Steve argue was pretty damned entertaining.

“Let go, dammit,” Jessica said. Steve was carrying her into the common room, princess-style, though apparently Jessica’s idea of princess-like behavior was kicking and twisting and poking and doing everything else in her power to try to get the prince to put her the hell down.

“Stay. Here,” Steve said, dumping her on the sofa. “I mean it, Jess, seriously. I don’t want you back at your office until we find out who trashed it.” He was already in the suit, looking all Stern and Captain-y.

Jessica rolled her eyes. “I begin to have sympathy with you, Barnes,” she said. “What is it, you think, with these top Avenger assholes, that make them all overprotective, and not in a cute way? You are Not Cute, Steve Rogers!”

“It’s the helmets,” Bucky said. “Squeezes their brains.”

“Knew it had to be something,” Jessica said, straightening up on the sofa and chucking a cushion at Steve. “You’d better bring me back a can of cake frosting on your way home.”

Bucky snorted. “What?”

Steve muttered something that did not sound much like he was planning to make a grocery stop on the way back, but before either of them could decipher it, he was down the elevator and off to his PR thing. Bucky wondered if there would be dancing girls, or if this was just an excuse for some advertising executive to take pictures of Steve’s biceps.

“What, you’ve never eaten cake frosting with a spoon? You’re being deprived of one of life’s little treasures.” She sighed. “So… it’s just you an’ me today. Entertain me.”

“What, you think I do a song and dance routine or something?”

“Well, that’d be awesome, but assuming you don’t,” Jessica said, “I was more thinking you might teach me how to fight. Steve’s been super critical; I apparently have all the technique of a pissed off goat.”

“Never underestimate the combat efficiency of aggravated farm animals,” Bucky said, but damn it, if Steve was making comments, she must be pretty bad. They hadn’t had a lot of time for training, but… shit. It was what Bucky did; it had been one of the best parts of being the Winter Soldier. Training. He’d missed it, even when he wasn’t sure what he was missing. He could remember when they’d given him Tash to mold and shape, the eagerness with which she’d hung on his praise, the pride of purpose. “Fine,” he huffed out. “Get changed, I’ll meet you in the gym.”

She was... terrible. Dear god. Steve was right to bench her; she could muscle her way through a fight with a normal, probably even twenty normals, so long as they didn't take her by surprise or she didn’t take a direct hit to a weak point, but against another powered person? Bucky would tie her in knots without too much effort. Even Tony might be able to take her without having to resort to missiles, and he was the least skilled hand-to-hand fighter on the team.

She had strength and power; when she punched into his palm, he could feel it all the way back to his shoulder, and he was pretty sure she wasn’t giving it all her strength either. She used her hands, fists, and elbows, fighting like a man, which would be okay if her model wasn’t a man who’d watched too many bad cop shows on television.

She did know one kick, a showy, perfect little piece that she’d probably learned from kung-fu movies, and when she tagged him with it, he went down like a bag of rocks.

It was a start.

“Use your legs more, Jones,” Bucky said. “You’re a woman, most of your power is below your hips.” The next time she came for him, he planted his foot right in the middle of her sternum, knocking her back across the ring, but she stopped in mid-air, rotating gently. Christ, he kept forgetting she could fly. Her next attack wiped him out, because he couldn’t anticipate her flight path. She didn’t fly like Tony, all science and trajectory, and not like Falcon, either, whose patterns were bird-like and darting.

But unpredictability was only one piece of the puzzle, and he’d be damned if she caught him more than once with that shit. He didn’t even think she knew what she was doing, her path was so erratic. He blocked her twice and knocked her to the floor, but she seemed to have engaged full on angel-mode. She barely touched the floor each time before she was back up. Throwing her was pointless; the harder he threw her, the harder she hit back, a kinetic loop that could really benefit her in close-quarters if she could learn to harness it.

Then she tagged him in the shoulder, sending a burst of feedback through the artificial arm and blacking out his vision on the left side for a second. Acting on pure instinct, he grabbed a handful of her hair and threw her to the mat, his foot coming down to stop a hair’s breadth over her throat.

Jessica stared up at him for a long moment, then tapped the mat. “Okay, I’m out.”

Bucky took a step back, breathing hard. “You’re not terrible,” he said. “You’re untrained, but there’s potential. Especially when you use your abilities. You don’t have to be afraid of them.”

“Ug,” Jessica said, stretching, then rubbing at a bruise on her shoulder. “You train in the school of hard knocks, dude.”

Bucky chuckled. “Yeah, that’s the unvarnished truth, right there. You let me an’ Tash handle your training, we’ll make you a fighter to reckon with. Steve won’t do it properly. He’s too busy dicking you to figure out--”

Jessica laughed, “Wow, you kiss Stark with that mouth?”

“Pardon the intrusion,” JARVIS said, “but there is a situation involving Captain Rogers that you may wish to thwart.” Without waiting for permission, JARVIS threw up the local news, showing a clip. Steve, all spangly uniform and ridiculous patriotism, doing his schtick for the opening of one of the rebuilt facilities that had been destroyed during the Chitauri invasion.

Then, without warning, a man in the crowd lobbed something overhead. Steve was fast, snapping his shield off the magnetic harness, jumped up and blocked it.

Exactly the wrong thing to do; the device exploded on contact, raining pale blue mist all over the crowd. Steve hitched in a shocked breath and staggered. A second device rolled to him from the ground, exploded at his feet. More mist. Steve went to his knees, then over on his face. Around him, the crowds were falling like mown wheat at the touch of the mist.

“STEVE!” Bucky bellowed, rage and fear near to strangling him.

Men with gas-masks and tactical armor rushed over. It took four of them to get Steve up and carry him off. They ignored the shield, leaving it glittering in the morning light. They threw Steve into a green humvee, not an anonymous vehicle in the slightest, and drove off. That was the end of the newsclip, but JARVIS backed it up and zeroed in on the license plate. “I am accessing citywide traffic cameras. I have the location, headed north on Madison Avenue. Turning left on 135th.”

Bucky was moving before he thought, already planning. The roof first, to get his gear, then down to the garage for his bike.

“Wait for me, fuck, god dammit, wait!” Jessica grabbed her shoes and was hot on his heels, getting an arm in to block the elevator door from closing.

“You can’t come,” Bucky said, his teeth and jaw aching from clenching them together.

“Fuck you, Barnes,” Jessica said. “Neither of us is cleared for field work, but we’re the only ones here.”

He might need her. “I won’t snitch on you if you don’t tell on me,” Bucky offered.

Jessica thumbed the button for Steve’s floor. “We need those injector kits. Don’t you fucking leave this building without me.”

“I won’t,” Bucky said, holding the elevator until she came back with a handful of the antidotes stuffed in her pocket. They staggered out into the hangar and Bucky tore across the room to his locker, thumbing it open as fast as he could.

“I need a coat,” Jessica said.

“What?”

“If I’m cold, I can’t fight,” she said, struggling into her boots. “And gimme a gun, I know how to shoot.”

Fortunately, DOB-E liked to bring Bucky gifts of shirts and sweaters. He threw a long-sleeved thermal, a t-shirt printed with a penguin and a machine gun, and a sweatshirt at her. It would have to do. Gun, gun, he could do that, too, he had lots of those. Two machine pistols, and a handful of extra clips went into a bag that she slung over her shoulder.

Bucky geared himself up. He wished for a brief second that Tony was with them, but then pushed it aside; Tony was out of reach and there was no sense wishing for something he couldn’t have right now. The hell he was going to let someone take Steve.

“How much do you weigh?” Jess asked him.

That startled Bucky out of his murderous thoughts. “Um, two-sixty, I think,” Bucky said. “Closer to two-eighty with all the hardware. Why?”

“Okay.” Jess was turning slightly, one finger out in front of her. “Okay. Oh, hey, look, you have straps. That’ll help.” She grabbed the back of his gun harness. “Come on, this way.”

“What are you doing?”

She climbed up onto the ledge that surrounded the building. “Falling with style. Come on, soldier, your ride’s here.”

Bucky climbed up next to her, not looking down. Oh, Tony was going to kill him when he found out. She thrust her arm up inside the harness, grabbing hold.

“We need to go that way, about two miles. Give us a push off and I’ll handle the rest.”

“You sure you can carry me?”

“No. Jump.”

He took half a step backward and launched them over the side.

***

Jessica might have mis-guessed how much pissed off Russian assassin she could carry. They dropped like a rock for several stories before she got her balance and turned the dive into a graceful swoop, catching the air-currents and twisting into a barrel roll, gaining speed with each turn.

“Jesus, Jones,” Barnes snarled, “you tryin’ to make me puke? Fly straight.”

“You want to fly, you get to steer. Shut up.” Down, turn, bank. “Watch your feet!”

Barnes shouted, pulling his knees up at the last minute to avoid clipping the side of the Baxter Building. “You are a fucking lunatic!”

“Stop side-seat flying,” Jessica snapped back, then rolled again, picking up a thermal, oh, that was nice, warm air, warm warm… she spun into it, her shoulder aching from carrying a squirming, not particularly portable assassin. There had to be a better way to carry a passenger; this sucked so bad. He was totally throwing off her glide. Aerodynamic, but unwilling. Like a duck. Maybe she’d talk to Stark about it; he was good at design.

There! The sleeping crowd, with confused police everywhere, trying to figure out how to help, useless.

“Grab the shield,” Jessica said. “He’s gonna want it back.”

“Figured that out all by yourself, did you?” Barnes muttered, but he put one hand down as she swooped low to the ground. She hoped to God she could pull out on time, because if she gave the Winter Soldier an epic case of road-rash, there was going to be more than one Avenger who wanted to kill her.

Barnes snagged the strap of the shield and it dragged along the concrete, shooting sparks all over the place. She screamed in agony as she lifted and arched upward, the small of her back straining. She yanked them skyward in a desperate climb: a hundred meters, two hundred, and the air was clean and pure and icy at this height. She took a deep, cleansing breath, and then let gravity pull them into a steep dive.

Barnes had stopped struggling, and now he pushed his weight with hers, flattening out underneath her and leaning as she did to circle, like riding a bike in tandem. He thumbed the comm in his ear. “JARVIS, where are they?” She couldn’t hear the reply over the rush of air, but Barnes pointed. “Go, go, go.”

“I’m not exactly doing my nails here!” Jessica turned, following his direction and muttering to herself. She was getting cold and losing altitude and her muscles all burned and ached. “God, tell me we’re almost there.”

Barnes consulted with JARVIS, then pointed again. They turned the corner and there was the damn escape vehicle, parked in an alley. Jessica lined up the shot, and dropped Barnes off right on the roof; he rolled down into the alley, gun already up and ready, hunter’s eyes scanning the area. She, not so graceful, aimed as best she could and came down in a pile of trashbags, which was a slightly softer (but also exceptionally gross) landing.

He took a few steps forward and grabbed her hand, yanking her to her feet. “Stay behind me.”

“Sure, you go first, carry-on luggage,” Jessica said, staggering a bit. She was totally going to regret this in the morning. Christ, but her back hurt.

Jessica was not good at following orders or paying attention, though, and promptly ignored the order of march when Barnes led them into what looked like an empty warehouse. It wasn’t her fault that Barnes was built like a fucking brick wall; he made a better door than a window, so she had to step to the side so she could see. That nearly got her stupid head blown off. As it was, the first bullet crossed her cheek like a high velocity papercut before Barnes yanked her down and behind cover.

“For fuck’s sake, woman, _stay_ _behind me,_ ” Barnes snarled.

“I’m not a china doll, Buckaroo Banzai,” Jessica protested, yanking her arms over her head as someone emptied an entire magazine at them. For a long moment, the air full of flying lead and explosive sounds, she was too terrified to continue her complaint.

Barnes jerked her around to face him, his jaw set. “Look, this is not some misguided fucking chauvinist shit. You think I could survive living with a Black Widow with that kind of attitude? This is fucking _tactics_. I am _bigger_ than you are, I _heal faster_ than you do, and I _actually have fucking armor on_ , goddammit.”

Over his shoulder, Jessica finally spotted the shooter, hiding in the shadows on the second floor, wearing some sort of concealment armor that shimmered in the darkness like an oil slick. “Hold still,” she whispered, barely audible over the echo of gunfire. Careful, she put her arms around his neck like she was terrified, the pistol in her hand coming slowly up his metal arm, scraping against him, then she inhaled, her finger on the trigger. She exhaled, listening to her own heart thumping in her chest, and then… She squeezed.

The casing bounced off Barnes’s neck with the sizzle of burning flesh, but he didn’t move and she got off two more rounds, punching holes in the sniper. He staggered forward, the oil-shimmer camo flickering until the guy pitched over the side of the rail and fell, unmoving, to the floor.

The silence that followed was deafening. Or at least it seemed that way to Jessica. Barnes was probably actually deafened, at least temporarily. That happens, Jessica thought, when some stupid bitch shoots a gun not half an inch away from a super-soldier’s enhanced ear. Barnes glared at her and twirled his finger near his ear, then drew a slash through the air with one hand, telling her what she’d already guessed, and then cuffed her in the back of the head once. He wasn’t missing anything, though. The room was dead quiet; the only things to hear were her frantic heartbeat and Barnes’ labored breathing.

Barnes stood guard while Jessica searched the room, looking for anything: secret doors, elevators, footprints, even, god, a crate or a box... Where the hell had they taken Steve? When she found a single plastic broomstraw, she heaved a sigh of relief. They’d swept the floor behind them, to hide their tracks. She moved carefully, a few steps, watching the patterns of dust on the floor, caught sight of a rounded scrape, like a shoe’s tread, then…

“It’s here,” she said, pointing to the wall. “Gotta be. Help me look around, see if you can find a trigger or a--”

Barnes punched through the wall with his metal arm, wood and steel splintering around him.

“--or you could just do that, I guess,” Jessica finished. Barnes yanked the passageway open using his “instant door-knob, just add fury”.

They got halfway down the stairs, Jessica watching their back, when there was more gunfire. Barnes used his metal arm as a shield. Sparks flew off where the bullets hit it, and they ricocheted unpredictably into the walls and floor. Jessica snatched Steve’s shield off Barnes’s back and crouched behind it, not sure which way to turn to avoid the ricochettes.

The shooter died with an awkward cracking sound as Barnes’s hand crushed his throat and threw him aside. Ug. Jessica stepped gingerly over the body, still trying to figure out what to do with the shield, which made strange, subaudible singing sounds as air passed over the surface. It felt _alive_ in her hands, and the more she listened, the more she got the impression that it wasn’t particularly impressed with her. Which was annoying as shit, because she was trying to save its damn owner.

A sliver of shadow fell over her and she turned and squeezed the trigger as if on automatic. Another one of those oil-slicked camo bastards toppled down the stairs after them. She put a little too much flight into her dodge out of the way and wound up crammed against the ceiling. Barnes made an exasperated sound and grabbed her ankle. For half a second she thought he would just tow her along like the world’s most ungainly balloon, but then he pulled her back down to the floor.

Being pinned in a narrow stairwell was not her idea of a good time, but that’s exactly what was going to happen. Their infiltration had been of the non-stealthy sort, and whatever was down there was going to be waiting for them. She handed one of the injection kits to Barnes, and then stabbed herself in the thigh with one of the other ones; hopefully it would give them a few minutes of immunity. They split the remainder between them.

Barnes held out his hand and Jessica put the shield in it; as the metal passed from her hands to his, there was a change in the singing sounds it made -- something like determination and acceptance. She scoffed inwardly -- stupid, to be jealous of a piece of metal, but Barnes carried it like he was made for it, almost as seamless an extension of his arm as it was for Steve. He held up a hand to her, motioned that he was headed into the room and two fingers.

Unfortunately hand-waving spy-talk class had been right after Algebra, and she’d ditched it to sneak smokes under the bleachers, so she had no fucking idea what he wanted her to do, but what the hell, she was making this shit up as she went anyway. She shrugged and nodded. He’d do his thing and she’d try to keep up.

Barnes held the shield in front of him and burst into the room at his top super-soldier speed. She’d seen Steve move like that, practically invisible. He’d told her that he could get about sixty miles an hour, running flat out, but it wore him down quick. Barnes had to be faster. He was a blur of black, a lethal shadow. He smashed through the troops, shield covering him, gun blazing.

He tossed the empty aside and drew another, then a third, and as far as she knew, he was out, and there were still too many soldiers. One of them tried to slow him down the the ICER guns, but -- yay, science and the immunity kits -- he kept moving. Halfway through his charge, his footsteps faltered and then he was using his teeth to pop the cap on another injector kit, stabbing himself with it as he ran.  

She cracked her pistol, checked the clip, then got a running start, launching herself up as she crossed through the doorframe, turning in mid-air and shooting back the way she’d come, using the recoil as momentum. Eight shots, four drops, and there was Barnes with the double-tap, following up. She rolled, hitting the far wall like a swimmer doing laps, pushed herself back the way she came, dropping the clip out of the gun as she moved. Fuck, she couldn’t get to the spare; the bag kept swinging wildly across her hip as she groped for it. Distracted, she hit the wall moving at what was probably around forty-five miles an hour.

All the air whooshed out of her lungs and she hit the floor, trying desperately to remember how to breathe. She tumbled behind a white and glass container filled with… orange soda? That’s sort of what it looked like. She took cover behind it as gunfire rattled around; she didn’t even know who was shooting anymore, if it was Barnes or the soldiers or both.

There was a girl in the box, a mask over her face. She floated in the orange goo, her toes pointed toward the floor as if she was hovering. Her eyes were closed, her hair spreading out in a halo around her. She couldn’t have been more than six, fragile and perfectly still.

Across the room, two men were arguing, one of them holding a very large gun. He pointed at the crate where Jessica crouched, yelling. She couldn’t hear him, but the implications were clear. _Shoot through it._ Jessica pulled in air. Everything happened in slow motion. She got to her feet, prepared to jump. The man aimed his gun, finger on the trigger. Jessica leaped, twisted, went over the box and came down on the other side, arms spread to protect the girl as much as possible.

She didn’t even have time to close her eyes.

Barnes shouted from the other side of the room, something, she couldn’t hear him, and then the shield was cutting through the air like a giant lethal frisbee. Bullets rattled off it as the arc of the throw brought it in front of her. _Use your legs, Jones._

Just as the shield was passing her, between bullets and her own vulnerable flesh, she kicked out, struck the disc in the center with a resounding crash, sending it spinning toward the gunmen. Both of them went over and the shield smashed into the wall and hung there, as if it were waiting for Barnes to grab it. The resonance of its song was incredibly smug.

Barnes snatched it out of the wall and brought it up again, but--

“Oh, god, is it over?” They both turned slowly, but there was no one left to stand against them.

***

In her life, Jessica Jones had done many things she didn’t actually want to do. She reluctantly added talking the Winter Soldier through a full-blown panic attack to that list after they found Steve, sound asleep, inside one of the orange-goo tanks. Barnes had broken two of her fingers when she’d pushed him away from the controls. “You can’t open it, Barnes,” she yelled. “We got no idea how this thing works, you want to kill him by accident?”

That was when he melted down, screaming and tearing at his hair, falling to his knees.”No! No, Steve, I can’t, I can’t--”

“Barnes, listen, _listen_! Where’d you grow up, Barnes? What street did you live on?”

She could hear her own voice in her head. _Main Street. Birch Street.  Higgins Drive. Cobalt Lane._ “What street, Barnes?”

“Pierrepont.”

“What’s the next block over?”

“Henry.” Barnes heaved a breath, shuddering under her hands.

“One street over from that?”

“Mont… montague.”

“Next block down?”

He paused, thinking. “Remsen?”

“Say it again.” _Main Street. Birch Street. Higgins Drive. Cobalt Lane._

“Pierrepont. Henry. Montague. Remsen.”

“You good?”

Bucky looked up at her, his eyes dark and haunted. “Yeah, think so. That’s… that’s slick.”

Jessica gave him a pained smile. “Helps. Sometimes, usually.” She rocked back and forth with him, feeling the strength of him under her fingers. “My rape counselor taught it to me.”

Bucky’s eyes grew sharper. Jessica bit her lip. _Shit_ , she hadn’t meant to tell him that, and maybe he saw a little of that in her face because he nodded. Nodded, and didn’t ask. Bucky got to his feet, offered her a hand up. He touched his ear. “JARVIS, we need an SI team down here to retrieve Captain America and several other… victims. Alive, as far as we can tell.”

Jessica ran her hand along the container holding Steve, motionless, stripped down to his shorts, breathing through a tube, suspended in orange goo, then continued down the row, mentally cataloguing the others. The girl she’d seen before. A young Asian boy, maybe twelve. And then-- “Oh, god, _Luke_.”

“You know him?” Bucky finished his conversation and joined her.

“Luke Cage,” she said. “My… erm. My ex, actually. We had a big fight, about two months ago, or so? Before Christmas. I… hadn’t seen him, since.” She ran her hand over the glass, Luke’s glorious, flawless ebony skin just below where she could reach.

“You think he’s been here, the whole time?”

“I don’t… no, he hasn’t. He was at my office, I think that’s where they must have nabbed him. He was…”

“He was looking for you,” Bucky said.

Jessica nodded and closed her eyes, tears threatening. Had Luke come looking for her, to make up, and been captured? Was… shit. She would have been there, if she hadn’t been with Steve. They’d both be in the goo now-- _Main Street. Birch Street. Higgins Drive. Cobalt Lane._

“Are you going to go back to him?” Bucky asked, his voice still and solemn.

Well, that was the fucking question, wasn’t it?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Before you flood our comments with the argument that humans are not particularly aerodynamic and what the hell is the duck about, let us explain this, because it's yet another one of our throwaway geek/pop-culture references. It comes from a tabletop RPG that we both played in for a while which included roll modifiers for throwing something based on whether it was a) aerodynamic and b) willing (or at least not fighting) being thrown. With the example: “For instance, if you are throwing something that is aerodynamic and unwilling, like a duck...” Which we all found so hilarious that it was quoted, in and out of context, for many, many, MANY years to come. So yes, we know that Bucky is, in fact, not aerodynamic. But then we couldn’t have included the joke, which we wanted to do even though we are probably the only ones who actually find it funny.
> 
> 2) As a matter of fact, we _are_ going to tell you what happened with Clint and Darcy in Asgard. That story will be posted in two chunks, this Friday and next!
> 
> 3) We are _also_ going to tell you what the hell is with Tony's message at the beginning about being a mile underground at the beginning. That will start posting next week, which will happen one day early, on account of next Tuesday being Valentine's Day and the first chapter of that fic being like 80% smut. You're welcome. :D
> 
> 4) There will also be a standalone smut posting on Valentine's Day. It's going to be a fairly smutty posting week, is what you should take away from this.


	13. Just Too Blinded

> “We are just too blinded by the phrase, "grow old together" and learning its meaning from hopeless movies and novels that glorify undying love and unbelievable understanding. Don't you think? Reality is...  Love dies. People change. And we grow old together in present. Today, tomorrow, and every day after that. It's not about eternity. It's not till death do us part. It's about today. This day. And I believe only in today. So, come! Let's grow old together today!”   
> \-- Mansi Laus Deo

Jessica fussed with the chairs and the order of the long white-and-glass crates with their precious cargo until she found an arrangement that, while not making her happy, at least made her less uncomfortable. At first, she’d arranged them, Luke, then the two children, and then Steve on the far end, so that her two lovers were as far apart as possible. That seemed fair, somehow, and respectful.

But when she was sitting at Steve’s side, she felt like she should be watching over Luke, and whenever she was with Luke, she worried that Steve would feel slighted. Not that any of them gave any indication whatsoever of being aware of whether she was there or not. It was, honestly, like reassuring a cabinet. But still, it bothered her.

And the look Bucky gave her, that one time he came in and found her asleep, arms spread over Luke’s container. He wasn’t angry. She would have understood angry. She might not have felt as guilty if he was angry. He’d just been sad, and the way he touched the glass over Steve’s face was oddly tender and heart-rending. It probably had nothing to do with her at all; Steve was his best friend, and he was stuck… hibernating, she guessed it was. They needed Banner and Stark for this, but they weren’t able to get a message to UnderMichigan, so everyone was stuck. Waiting.

Maybe Luke hadn’t even come back to make up. Maybe he had been in her office for some other reason-- And that was when she knew she was just making excuses, wanting someone else to take the burden of decision off her. It wasn’t fair, she thought, and you’d think she’d have stopped being startled and offended when unfair things happened. So she pushed Luke’s container over next to Steve’s, so she could sit between them. They were both good men, and she was going to have to chose. More, neither of them deserved to be treated like a consolation prize, to be the one she stayed with simply because the other bowed out and left. Not, she thought, that she was much of a prize.

_That’s my girl you’re bad-mouthing._

Jessica inhaled, then blew it out. It wasn’t fair, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have to choose.

She and Luke, they’d fought and they’d fucked and they’d sheltered each other from the storms of life. He was a good man, and there wasn’t any question about that, even with his faults factored in. Luke had gotten her through some of the roughest nights of her life, and she was always going to be grateful for that, no matter what. But…

She turned and looked at Steve. He floated in the goo, unmoving, quiet and peaceful, which was absolutely nothing like Steve Rogers. Steve was about more than surviving the night. He was more than a place to hide from the world. Yeah, they’d fought, too. She was Jessica Jones; pissing people off was part of her charm -- and to be honest, neither man was exactly what you’d call “even-tempered”. But Steve made her _better_. He gave her shelter, but he expected her to be better tomorrow than she was today. Not in a belittling or threatening way, but because he genuinely believed that being better, _doing_ better, was a goal that _everyone_ had, and that it was his duty and privilege -- not as Captain America, but as _Steve Rogers_ \-- to help anyone who needed it.

He made her _want_ to be better, to break out of the cycle of storms and shelters, to rise above the darkness.

_Is this -- us -- not worth it to you, to fight for it?_

Yeah, she thought, looking down at him. Yeah, it is worth it.

***

There was no way to tell, Tony Stark said; the fluid had to drain off and then… then they would just have to wait.

And that he said it so calmly was… worrisome. When Bucky had finally gotten through to the team in Michigan, they’d headed straight home; both Stark and Banner looked exhausted, wrung out, paler and thinner than two weeks spent underground should have made them. They’d come straight to the medlab and started working without even washing the rest of the dirt off. And with no discernible results to report, Stark shouldn’t look this... relaxed.

Bucky was subtly tense, too. That was a pretty big clue.

Stark grinned, that huge, shit-eating press grin, and he hooked one arm around Jessica’s shoulders and the other around Bucky’s and then bodily dragged them both out of the room.

“On a scale of one to ten,” he said, still showing every single one of those teeth, “guess how _pissed off_ I am with the two of you.”

Jessica leaned forward a bit, exchanged a glance with Bucky. “Eleven?”

Bucky nodded, “Eleven.”

They both looked at Stark then. “Eleven.”

“At. _Least_ ,” Stark said, biting off each word. “Would you like to tell me exactly what the hell you were thinking? Assuming any thoughts at all were bouncing around in your heads?”

Jessica chewed her lip. “Um, that Bucky was going anyway, and I fly faster than his bike?” She squinched her eye shut a little bit. “And, um. That it was my boyfriend they’d grabbed and I wanted him back. You know… normal stuff.”

“Wasn’t thinkin’ at all,” Bucky admitted. “It’s _Steve_. They… I couldn’t just… what was I supposed to do?”

“At the very, bare minimum, call for backup?” Stark suggested. “There are _two_ of you, neither cleared for Avengers fieldwork--”

“ _Technically_ it wasn’t an Avenger’s assemble call,” Jessica said. “We were the only ones in the building at all; you guys were in the rabbit hole up in Michigan,  Clint -- did you know he’s sleeping with Darcy Lewis? -- was invited to some state dinner on _Asgard_ , and Falcon was in DC for a thing… there just wasn’t that much time.”

“Two of you,” Stark reiterated. “And no idea how many of _them_ there were, and--”

Bucky, the lovely idiot, opened his mouth. “Thirty-six, plus the two in that weird mechanical camo shit.”

Tony closed his eyes, a faint line appearing between his brows as if he had a headache. “Did you know that going in? They felled Steve with _two breaths_ of that shit they dropped on the crowd, and if they’d grabbed you guys, we wouldn’t have had a clue of where to even _start looking_.”

“We used the antidote kits,” Jessica protested. “The ones Fitz and Simmons cooked up for us. They work.” Bucky scowled at her, fierce, and shook his head.

“You--” Stark pulled his arms back and put his hands over his face, balling them into fists and pressing his knuckles against his eyes. He didn’t drop them when he said, “Urgency. I get it, okay. I’ve _been there_ , I _know_ , but maybe, next time, at least call someone with a location before you bust in? Okay? I can’t handle-- Just...”

“We were fine, baby,” Bucky said, soothingly. “Well, aside from the whole _making me deaf_ in the middle of combat.” He shot a snide look at Jessica.

Jessica threw up her hands. “Next time there’s an invisible sniper, I should just let you handle it, is that it?”

Bucky snorted. “You’re the one who got yourself shot.”

“Right. Don’t think I didn’t see you catch that grenade with your elbow. You field worse than Pete Rose, Jr.”

Stark twitched, violently, and dropped his hands to stare at Bucky. “Grenade?” he asked pleasantly.

“Was this before or after you slammed into the wall and dropped your gun, Jones?” Bucky snapped back. “It was a frag-grenade, Tony, no big deal. Lots of annoying little tiny sharp things. Dr. Cho got them all out.”

“But the shield thing was good,” Jessica pointed out. “Saved my life, I’m pretty sure. Three bullets to the chest might have slowed down my super-heroing.”

“Eh,” Bucky admitted. “You handle yourself pretty well for an amatuer.”

Stark was looking a little pale. “I don’t think I can hear any more of this. I’m going to go poke Bruce and see what he’s figured out about the goo. Try, you two, not to get into any more trouble.” He walked away, pausing after a few steps to turn around and fix them -- or maybe it was just Bucky -- with a glare. “Eleven,” he said, and then left.

Jessica stuck her tongue out at him as Stark walked away. “So, you think I’ve ruined my chances of getting a second invite to the team?”

“Steve probably gets a say, too, if you want to stick around,” Bucky said. He chewed his lip and looked at the empty doorway.

“Go make up with him,” Jessica suggested. “It’ll probably go better if I’m not… egging you on.”

Bucky shrugged his right arm. “He’s gonna have to get used to it eventually. I don’t do ‘benched’ and I don’t do ‘sensible.’ Those things don’t belong in my playbook anymore than they do in his.”

“Pretend,” she said. “ _Lie_. He’ll see right through you, but he’ll pretend to believe you and it’ll make him feel better.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “Okay.” He paused then said, “You did good, Jones. Whatever Tony says.”

“Yeah. You, too. I’ll go… wait for Steve to wake up, and then we’ll probably get yelled at again.”

“Probably.”

***

Luke sat there, big and powerful, looking down at his hands, while Dr. Banner explained what had happened to him. Captured, held immobile for at least twelve days that they could account for, and possibly longer, for purposes they still weren’t certain of, but given some of the other things they’d found in the secret base, they were decidedly not on the friendly list.

He’d reached for Jessica as soon as he’d woken, and she’d done him the terrible disservice of hesitating before letting him embrace her. He’d known, as soon as that happened, that whatever they’d had together was done. And now, looking at him, she was sad. Sad, but not sorry.

“I…” She hesitated, then said quickly, “Look, Luke, I met someone, okay? Couple weeks after you left.”

“Rebound boy?”

“Maybe at first,” she said, shrugging. “But. No. Not anymore.” It was the hardest thing she’d ever done, meeting Luke’s gaze, knowing he was hurting and that she was going to have to just let him hurt. “I love him.”

Luke blinked. The L-word wasn’t something they’d discussed. Ever. Not even an insincere gasp in the midst of passion. Luke looked at her, steady, and then nodded. “He takes care of you?”

“No,” Jessica said, and maybe that was where it was important, the difference. She loved Luke, but… “He stands by me while I take care of myself. He’s a good man. And he helps me believe that maybe I deserve that.”

“Then he sounds like a good thing for you.” Luke offered his hand and Jessica took it in hers, let herself feel the warmth of his fingers, the smooth, unbroken, unbreakable surface of his skin. “And I’m happy for you.”

“Thank you,” she said, soft and sad.

She walked him out of the Tower, kissed his cheek when he turned to go, and watched him walk away until the crowds had swallowed him. It was done, and she couldn’t regret it. She walked back inside and ducked through the lobby and into the private elevator that was reserved for the Avengers and their guests. She was just punching the button for medical when JARVIS spoke up. “Miss Jones,” he said, “Captain Rogers is waking up.”

“I’m on my way,” she said.

***

Tony was in a state of high snit when Steve woke up, that much was clear. Tony had given him an infodump that made Steve’s head spin, mostly because it included things like “stupidly irresponsible” and “needlessly reckless” and then summed it up with “and Jones’s boyfriend, Luke Cage” which was something Steve did not need right after waking up covered with orange slime after apparently being asleep for four days.

“I thought--”

“I don’t care what you thought, Capcicle,” Tony snapped. “The point is that Jessica Jones and Bucky Barnes -- aside from both being annoyingly alliterative -- went all fucking vigilante to save your ass, and neither of them is listening to me about it _at all_. Thirty-six… no, thirty-eight, to two. Does that seem like good odds to you, because it doesn’t seem good to me. No backup, no call-ins, and I might add for Jones, no goddamn _armor or gear_ because when I asked her if she wanted to be on the team, she rather rudely told me where to stuff it.”

“I don’t see what you want me to do about it,” Steve said. _Especially since if she’s gone back to Luke, there’s no point; it’s over._ And he might be nearly invincible, but his heart hurt, so goddamn bad.

“I want you to put on your Captain face and make the two of them see reason before I die of a heart attack. People listen to you. It’s revolting, honestly, because you are just too precious for words, but they do, and I am not above using that for my own nefarious purposes. So, go out there and be the change I hope to accomplish for the world, starting with putting a goddamn braking system on your bff and your bae.”

“It’s kinda hard for me to complain too much, Tony; they did come and save me, after all.”

“By rushing headlong into a situation they knew _nothing_ about and nearly getting themselves killed!”

“Gosh,” Steve said drily, “none of us have ever done _that_ before. It’s funny, actually,” he continued before Tony could get started again. “Didn’t you and Pepper break up because she couldn’t handle you going into danger over and over?”

“What? No, that was completely different!” Steve raised an eyebrow at him. “For one thing, there’s--” Tony hesitated, and then slumped. “Son of a bitch.”

Steve chuckled and patted Tony’s arm. It was one of the things Steve honestly liked about Tony: presented with clear evidence of his mistakes, he had no hesitation about owning up to them. “If it makes you feel any better,” Steve said, “I’ll have a word with them about having JARVIS issue a general alert in situations like that before they leave the building.”

“Yeah, fine, that’s...” Tony pulled a face. “I should probably go and apologize now, shouldn’t I?”

“Probably,” Steve agreed.

Tony didn’t move, though, just kept staring into the middle distance, tapping idly at his chest.

“You don’t need flowers or anything,” Steve nudged. “Just go and--”

“Problem is,” Tony said, “I’m not sure which one of them I should apologize to first.”

“Well, Jess is--”

Tony shook his head. “Not Bucky or Jess. Bucky or _Pepper_.”

“Tony.” Steve waited until Tony actually focused on him, which took a few seconds. “Apologize to your current partner first. Best way to make sure they _remain_ your current partner.” Not that Steve thought Bucky would break up over it; the number of times Bucky had bawled out _Steve_ for getting into fights without bringing backup meant that Bucky probably knew pretty well where Tony was coming from. Still, the sooner peace was restored, the better.

“...Yeah.” Tony nodded. “Yeah, good call, that’s-- When did you get to be the relationship guy, Rogers?”

Steve laughed ruefully. “I’m hoping this is just a one-off. Go. Let Jess know I’d like to see her, if you run into her.”

***

Stark passed her in the hall and opened his mouth.

“No,” Jessica said. “I’m instituting a rule; if I join your little superhero treehouse, you’re only allowed to yell at me once a day, and you’ve already used up your turn for today.”

Stark actually laughed at that, a little. “We should all have that rule,” he said. “We’d get a hell of a lot more done. Anyway, I was just going to tell you Steve is asking for you.”

“He’s not still slimey is he? I have had enough of that crap.” She shuddered.

“Nah, we got most of the slime off while he was out, and I’m pretty sure he’s taken care of the rest on his own by now. Bruce is just keeping him in the medlab for a while to make sure there’s no delayed side-effects and to track his recovery against those kids’, while we try to figure out who they belong to.”

Jessica nodded. “Okay… and um… _is_ that offer still open?”

He grinned. “If you’re ready to Avenge, we’re ready to take you. I can’t make any promises about the yelling, though. That’s kind of a thing. You get used to it. Something tells me you’ll be giving as good as you get in no time.”

“ _Part time_ Avenging,” she stressed. “I still want to do my job. Track missing persons and chase around cheating spouses. I’m weirdly good at it.” She paused for a minute, then took a deep breath, leaned forward and gave Tony Stark the Shortest Hug Ever. “Sorry I’ve spent most of my adult life hating you. It’s... not your fault.”

He grinned at her, and while it was still toothy, it wasn’t nearly as scary as the smile he’d been giving her and Bucky earlier. “You’re part of a very large club, there. And yes, obviously you should keep your day job. I’ve got a couple of them, Bruce still sciences in his spare time, Thor is an actual royal prince with actual dignitary duties, et cetera, et cetera... It’s not a firehouse where we all sit around playing cards until the bell rings, you know.”

“Well, that’s good,” she said. “I’d kick your ass at poker.”

“In your dreams, Jones. In your sad, sad, dreams.” Tony finger-gunned her and headed off down the hall.

Jessica shook her head and headed off to medical. “How very strange,” she said, mostly talking to herself. “I think I just made friends with Tony Stark. Maybe I’m running a fever or something. Is there a pill for that? Ointment, maybe?”

“That you, Jess?” Steve’s voice drifted from around a privacy curtain.

“Yep,” she said. “All done with the life-changing plans. Whew. Weirdly enough, I don’t even feel like I need a drink.”

“Well that’s... good.” He sounded oddly subdued.

“Are you decent back there, or should I walk faster?” Jessica asked.

“I, I’m. I’m decent?”

“Bummer.” She stuck her head around the corner. “Lucky for you, I never am. You okay, cowboy? That stuff takes it out of you, I know, I had a killer headache after that blue shit.”

“Mostly, I guess? It’s...” He shook his head, sat up a little straighter in the hospital bed and gave her a look that was as guarded and closed as she’d ever seen on him. “So, uh. Tony said one of the other, uh, prisoners, I guess? Was your boyfriend.”

“Luke,” she said, nodding. “They nabbed him while he was at my office, looking for me. They must have used the aerosol formula on him, his skin’s impervious to… pretty much everything.”

He nodded as well, face still wooden. “I’m... sorry that happened to him. Everyone’s okay now, though?”

“Yeah, you were the last one to wake up; you got a double-dose. Saw it on the television. You scared me to death, Rogers.”

He almost smiled at that. “Wasn’t like it was on my itinerary for the day. Tony said you and Bucky swooped in and saved the day.”

“Totally saved the day, it was awesome! And I only got shot once, so that was good,” she said, touching her cheek where the faintest pale line remained. “Bucky says I’m not bad, ‘for an amateur,’ but he couldn’t even find the trap door without a map and a flashlight.”

Steve huffed a little. “Different skillsets, I guess. Thanks for coming for me.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t? I mean, I know you like to do the white knight thing, but, you know, fair’s fair. You gotta let me save the day sometimes, too.”

“Guess so,” he said, looking down at his hands.

“Are… are you _mad_ about it? I mean… seriously, Bucky was really looking out for me, crazy as the thought of you being kidnapped made him. And I mean, serious, way crazy, dude is cray cray. But I mean, if you’re mad, I guess--”

Steve looked up, startled. “Why would I be mad? Tony thinks I should be, but he was just scared. I’ve seen you both in action.”

“Well, don’t tell Tony, but I _was_ scared. I’ve never been shot at so many times before in my life. Noisy. I never realized how noisy gunfire is. I learned to shoot with earmuffs.”

“Yeah, we spent most of the war with our ears ringing, I think.” He looked over at the wall, where there was absolutely nothing of interest.

“Steve?”

Steve drew a slow, deep breath. “Are you goin’ back to him?”

Jessica blinked. “I… um, Luke, you mean?”

“Yeah. I-- I ain’t mad, but I gotta know.”

“Didn’t we… I thought we’d... No. _No_ , I’m not going back to Luke. No. I’m staying here. I was just… just talking with Tony about becoming an Avenger, and… if that’s not what you want, but… I thought it _was_.”

He looked at her, eyes wide and vulnerable. “I thought-- You’re staying?” His lips curved. “Joining the team and everything?”

“Part time,” she said. “I like my business, I’m good at what I do. And people need me. But yeah, joining the team.” She waved a little imaginary flag.

His smile bloomed, practically lighting up the entire room. “You’re staying.”

“You thought…. God--” She punched him in the shoulder. “--you thought I was _leaving_. Life changing decisions, oh, Steve… Jesus.”

“Ow,” he said, but he sounded happy about it. He caught her hand and pulled until she was forced to climb up onto the bed with him, and kissed her.

Jessica leaned into the kiss with some enthusiasm, then pushed him back. “You’re worth fighting for, Steve. _Us_. I didn’t change my mind. Felt bad, yeah. He’s unhappy. Luke’s been good to me, but… we’ve been doing this ‘break up and get back together’ thing for too long. When I needed him, he wasn’t there. Or I wasn’t there. We sucked, as a couple.”

“Well, you never _told_ me that before,” he said reasonably. “What I did know, he sounded like a good guy. He might’ve been worth fighting for, too.”

“Didn’t really seem like date-appropriate material, cowboy,” she said. “Oh, let me tell you about my ex, he’s huge, did I mention that, like seriously, at least four inches around the chest broader than you are, and wow, gorgeous dark skin and muscles for days… and he yells at me and calls me a terrible person and walks off when I don’t do things the way he thinks is best. Or I yell at him and call him a control freak -- which is actually terrible of me, because I’ve been with a _literal_ control freak, like a guy with powers who can control people with his voice -- and then I stomp off. It’s not healthy. It’s kinda why I flipped out a bit when you went for your very aggressive walk.”

Steve was frowning, but he curled an arm around her waist and pulled her onto his lap. “I just-- I won’t do that,” he said. “I have to cool down, sometimes, but I’ll come back.”

“So, I can lock you out and keep all your stuff if you’re gone for a few weeks? That’s cool?” Jessica shook her head. “I know, Steve. I told him. You’re a good man. The best, really, but I didn’t say _that_ , he already feels bad and I feel bad about making him feel bad, and blech, then I start wanting a drink, but maybe I shouldn’t.”

“You shouldn’t,” Steve agreed. “You should stay right here and guard me.”

“From what? Cottonballs? Ugly hospital gowns? Dr. Banner bringing you a bedpan. I can see how that would be scary.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Steve said. He hooked his chin over her shoulder and sighed mournfully. “You rescued me and I _missed_ it. You were probably really badass, too.”

“If you keep Tony out of the room, me and Bucky will tell you all about it,” Jessica promised. “And of course I’ll stay, Steve, if you want. Forever, maybe.”

 

 


	14. Epilogue: Some Other Beginning's End

> Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.  
>  \-- Seneca

“Got a kiss and make up present for you, Tony,” Jessica said, leaning her hip against the workbench where Tony was drinking coffee that had gone cold an hour ago while he tinkered with one of the cleaning bots, and she thought he might actually be installing a repulsor flight disk on it, and the less she knew about that, the better.

“I’m not kissing you, Jones,” Tony said. “We’ve discussed that already, how very bad it would be for me and my skull.”

She tucked the file against her stomach. “So, you don’t want it, then? If that’s the case, can Alias Investigations contract out two super soldiers for a bit, because I’m pretty sure I can’t handle this on my own.”

Tony sighed, then patted the bench next to him. “What am I looking at? And why don’t any of you use your tablets? That’s what I gave them to you for! This paper shit is archaic and annoying.”

Jessica loftily ignored that. “Well, before Leviathan tipped their hand by abducting Captain America, I was running an actual investigation -- you know, that thing people do before rushing into a situation wholly unprepared--”

“This is not a kiss and make up present if you’re going to continue throwing what I said last week in my face, Jones. You’re supposed to be nice to me when you give me a present.”

“You know what my big weakness is, Tony?” Jessica asked. “It’s that occasionally, I give a fuck what you think. Today… is not one of those occasions.” She softened that with a grin. “Anyway… this is the results of all my research. Compiled with some preliminary scouting, I’ve confirmed four additional Leviathan underground lairs, and two more that I’m pretty sure of, and the potential for a number of additional gel suspension chambers. I’ve done some other footwork and there are at least six other powered persons who normally reside in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut areas who are currently missing; there may be more. A lot of people aren’t that open about having abilities.”

“Do you have a plan, or is my present just ‘here’s a big problem, go handle it?’” Tony asked. He picked up the file and thumbed through it.

“Don’t even pretend like you wouldn’t love to be handed a big problem to solve. But there _are_ ten of us, and Steve has some friends who are between jobs at the moment -- former associates of Coulson -- who might be able to lend us some man-power, especially if we give them the hidey-hole I found in Hartford, where we won’t directly run into them and therefore can be a little creative in our reporting. They’ve got access to a couple of powereds, too, I’ve dug up a little on this guy Deathlok that they specifically mentioned, but I think they have a few more.”

“You’ve been working with Natasha a little too closely,” Tony pointed out. “You’re starting to sound like a spy.”

“Two Avengers -- or ex-shady-spy-people -- and a security team each, we could clear ‘em out all at once, probably with minimal casualties.”

“I’m assuming Rhodey is going to be number nine. Who are you counting as Avenger number ten?” Tony asked, super-casual.

“It’s a clean-up job, Tony,” Jessica said. “Bucky can handle it. And I promise, the rest of us _cannot_ handle it, if you leave him behind again.”

“Well, at least see if Clint is sobered up yet, and then we’ll discuss it.”

Jessica snorted. “I saw him quietly sobbing into his coffee this morning,” she said. “I think his radical new hair color is a bit traumatic for him.”

“Green isn’t his best color, really,” Tony said. “Did he say what happened?”

“Among a number of pleas to stop breathing so loud,” Jess said, “I managed to pick out words like meade, wine, something about Sif and her legs, an admonishment not to touch anything in Loki’s old room, and a firm ‘What happens in Asgard stays in Asgard.’”

“So, typical weekend for Barton, got it,” Tony said. “Okay, then. JARVIS?”

“Sir?”

“Can you put out a call to assemble, please, half an hour.”

“Of course, sir,” JARVIS said. “Right away.”

She probably didn’t want to know, but sticking her nose where it didn’t belong _was_ her job after all. “Hey, um… Tony?”

“Yes, Jones?”

“Why is the housebot flying?”

Tony didn’t quite blush, not _quite_ , but he did darken just a little, and kept his eyes firmly fixed on the ‘bot. “That is entirely your fault, Jones. Well, almost entirely. I lost a bet, and the less said about that, the better.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come and find us on tumblr where tisfan is [tisfan](http://tisfan.tumblr.com/) and 27dragons is [everyworldneedslove](http://everyworldneedslove.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
